Spatiotemporal changes in agricultural land cover in Nepal over the last 100 years

doi:10.1007/s11442-018-1559-9

Abstract

Abstract:

In order to advance land use and land cover change (LUCC) research in Nepal, it is essential to reconstruct both the spatiotemporal distribution of agricultural land cover as well as scenarios that can explain these changes at the national and regional levels. Because of rapid population growth, the status of agricultural land in Nepal has changed markedly over the last 100 years. Historical data is used in this study, encompassing soils, populations, climatic variables, and topography. Data were revised to a series of 30 m grid cells utilized for agricultural land suitability and allocation models and were analyzed using a suite of advanced geographical tools. Our reconstructions for the spatiotemporal distribution of agricultural land in Nepal reveal an increasing trend between 1910 and 2010 (from 151.2 × 10² km² to 438.8 × 10² km²). This expanded rate of increase in agricultural land has varied between different eco, physiographic, and altitudinal regions of the country, significantly driven by population changes and policies over the period of this investigation. The historical dataset presented in this paper fills an existing gap in studies of agricultural land change and can be applied to other carbon cycle and climate modeling studies, as well as to impact assessments of agricultural land change in Nepal.

Key words: agricultural land, reconstruction, land suitability for cultivation, altitudinal variation, Nepal

PAUDEL Basanta, Yili ZHANG, Shicheng LI, Linshan LIU. Spatiotemporal changes in agricultural land cover in Nepal over the last 100 years[J].Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2018, 28(10): 1519-1537.

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Data category	Spatial coverage	Temporal coverage	Unit	Original resolution	Re-gridded resolution	Data sources
LRMP-LULC	National	1978-1979	m	240 m	30 m	LRMP, 1986
Mean annual temperature	Global	1901-2010	°C	0.5°	30 m	CRU-TS-3.23
Mean annual precipitation	Global	1901-2010	mm	0.5°	30 m	CRU-TS-3.23
Population density	District	1911-2011	km²	-	30 m	CBS, Nepal
Elevation	Global	2015	m	30 m	30 m	SRTM-NASA
Slope	Global	2015	°	30 m	30 m	SRTM-NASA
Soil	National	2009	km	1 km	30 m	SOTER
Agricultural land (HYDE 3.1)	National	1910-1960	km²	-	-	Klein Goldewijk et al. (2011)
Agricultural land	District	1970-2010	km²	30 m	30 m	Paudel et al. (2017)