Quantified 'Land-use policy options' in forest land evaluation for watershed management.

Abstract

A forest land evaluation was made in the upper Kali Konto watershed in E. Java (Indonesia). The suitability of 155 Land Mapping Units for each of 13 Land Utilization Types was rated by standard procedures developed for rural land evaluation. A new concept of quantified 'land-use policy option' was introduced, being a theoretical combination of LUTs showing quantitatively, for the area as a whole, the consequences of a particular policy. The options are quantified by further specification of the LUTs in terms of one or more forest management models. The policies themselves comprise not only extremes such as 'conservation', 'population [needs]' or 'financial return' but also 'integrated' policies. In this case it is shown that an integrated land-use pattern could be developed to guarantee conservation of resources while largely meeting the demands of the local population for fuelwood and light timber and also yielding direct monetary benefits. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission)