Scenario analysis of land use change in Kabul River Basin – A river basin with rapid socio-economic changes in Afghanistan

Abstract

Land use management has a great importance in socio-economic development of countries and regions. Recently, Afghanistan has, at one hand, experienced significant socio-economic changes through political and economic transformation and, on the other hand it is considered amongst vulnerable countries to climate and other natural changes. For this, understanding the interactions between socio-economic and natural changes with land use change under different development scenarios is crucial for sustainable land use management. Present research took Kabul River Basin (KRB) as a case study area and used Dynamic of Land System (DLS) model to simulate land use/cover for the years of 2020 and 2030. For this purpose, various socio-economic and bio-physical datasets were prepared and then integrated into the model under three different scenarios i.e. baseline, economic development, and environmental protection. The results indicated a significant land use change under all three scenarios. Cultivated land, grassland and built-up area will significantly increase under all three scenarios; while forest area, water area and unused land will significantly decrease under the economic development and baseline scenarios. While in the environmental protections scenario, the forest area will considerably increase, however, water area still showed a decreasing trend but it will be lesser as compared to the other two scenarios. By considering the above degradations, particularly under baseline and economic scenarios, it is suggested that the government needs to develop overall land use planning in KRB to achieve a rational exploitation of land resources and we hoped that the results of this study will help to target management decisions on rational land uses and effective environment protections of KRB.