Abstract
Land degradation (LD) is an important issue worldwide because it affects food production and people’s welfare. Many factors cause land degradation, but in humid tropical areas, erosion is the main factor. More than 100 countries including Indonesia are affected by LD. Watershed management should be prioritized owing to budget constraints, while on the other side, the area affected by LD is very large compared to the size of the existing land area. The middle Citarum sub-watershed (MCSW) is one of the most degraded drylands in Indonesia, where the environment can be considered a typical humid tropical watershed. The objective of this study was to map degraded lands and prioritize restoration using a combined approach of the universal soil loss equation (USLE), the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and geographic information systems (GIS) in a multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) environment. The severity of LD was estimated quantitatively by analyzing the parameters of land use and land cover, slope, soil erosion, productivity, and management. The results indicated that the MCSW is dominated by the potentially degraded land classes (38%), followed by the degraded land classes (21%). The prioritization of LD restoration is suggested in the area of very high and high degraded land. The method developed in this research work could be adopted as a tool to guide decision-makers toward sustainable land resource management in humid tropical watersheds affected by LD.
Highlights
Land degradation (LD) is a dynamic environmental process that can reduce ecosystem functions and disrupts agricultural production
According to the judgments of the five experts, the highest weight values were given to the land use/land cover (LULC) in the protection forests and conservation forests (PFCFs) and PFPO areas, with weights of 0.519 and 0.502, respectively
In CAPO areas, the highest weights were given to management and productivity, which can be explained by the fact that if mismanagement occurs, the result is decreased land quality and thereby degraded land
Summary
Land degradation (LD) is a dynamic environmental process that can reduce ecosystem functions and disrupts agricultural production. LD refers to the reduced or lost biological and economic productivity of agricultural land or forests resulting. In the past two decades, LD has affected more than 20% of the vegetated land area and affects more than 1.5 billion people worldwide (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification [UNCCD], 2017). Bai et al (2008) have estimated that the area of the degraded land worldwide is 18.1 m km2, 92% of which due to land mismanagement. In the past 45 years, LD has caused world rice yields to decline by an estimated 1.6–2.7% and financial losses to exceed US$ 10.6 billion (Chen et al, 2012). The depletion of natural resources due to LD can occur in dry and subhumid climates alike (Omuto et al, 2014)
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