Land Use

Land is the major constituent of the lithosphere and is

the source of many materials essential for human
being and other organisms.
Pressure on natural resources due to increase of
population which are not in unlimited quantity.
'Land use' is also often used to refer to the distinct
land use types inzoning.
Land useis the human use of land. Land use involves
the management and modification of
natural environmentor wildernessinto
built environmentsuch as fields, pastures, and
settlements. It has also been defined as "the
arrangements, activities and inputs people undertake
in a certain land cover type to produce, change or
maintain it" (FAO, 1997a; FAO/UNEP, 1999).

Land use and the environment

Land use andland management practices have a major impact
on natural resources includingwater,soil, nutrients,plants
and animals. Land use information can be used to develop
solutions for natural resource management issues such as
salinity and water quality. For instance, water bodies in a
region that has beendeforestedor having erosion will have
different water quality than those in areas that areforested.
Forest gardeningis believed to be the oldest form of land use
in the world.[4]
The major effect of land use onland coversince 1750 has
been
deforestationoftemperate regions.
More recent significant effects of land use includeurban sprawl
,soil erosion,soil degradation,salinization, and desertification.
Land-use change, together with use offossil fuels, are the
major anthropogenicsources of carbon dioxide, a dominant
greenhouse gas.

Land Use and the Environment

According to a report by theUnited Nations'
Food and Agriculture Organisation, land degradation has
been exacerbated where there has been an absence of
any land use planning, or of its orderly execution, or the
existence of financial or legal incentives that have led to
the wrong land use decisions, or one-sided central
planning leading to over-utilization of the land resources for instance for immediate production at all costs.
As a consequence the result has often been misery for
large segments of the local population and destruction of
valuableecosystems.
Such narrow approaches should be replaced by a
technique for the planning and management of land
resources that is integrated and holistic and where land
users are central.
This will ensure the long-term quality of the land for
human use, the prevention or resolution of social conflicts
related to land use, and the conservation ofecosystemsof
highbiodiversity

Land degradation
Land degradationis a process in which the value of
thebiophysical environmentis affected by one or
more combination of human-induced processes acting
upon the land.
It is viewed as any change or disturbance to the land
perceived to be deleterious or undesirable.
Natural hazardsare excluded as a cause, however
human activities can indirectly affect phenomena such
as floods and bushfires.
This is considered to be an important topic of the 21st
century due to the implications land degradation has
upon agronomic productivity, the environment, and its
effects on food security.

It is estimated that up to 40% of the world's

agricultural land is seriously degraded.

Land degradation

Land Degradation

Land degradation is a broad term that can be applied differently across a

wide range of scenarios. There are four main ways of looking at land
degradation and its impact on the environment around it:
A temporary or permanent decline in the productive capacity of the land.
This can be seen through a loss of biomass, a loss of actual productivity or in
potential productivity, or a loss or change in vegetative cover and soil
nutrients.
A decline in the lands usefulness: A loss or reduction in the lands capacity
to provide resources for human livelihoods. This can be measured from a
baseline of past land use.
Loss of biodiversity: A loss of range of species or ecosystem complexity as a
decline in the environmental quality.
Shifting ecological risk: increased vulnerability of the environment or people
to destruction or crisis. This is measured through a baseline in the form of
pre-existing risk of crisis or destruction.
A problem with measuring land degradation is that what one group of people
call degradation, others might view as a benefit or opportunity. For example,
heavy rainfall could make a scientific group be worried about high erosion of
the soil while farmers could view it as a good opportunity to plant crops.

Land Degradation
Land degradation is a global problem, largely
related toagriculturaluse. The major causes
include:
Land clearance, such asclear cuttingand
deforestation
Agricultural depletion of soilnutrientsthrough poor
farming practices.
Livestockincludingovergrazingandoverdrafting
InappropriateIrrigation.
Urban sprawland commercial development
Land pollutionincludingindustrial waste
Vehicleoff-roading
Quarryingof stone, sand, ore and minerals

Land Degradation
The main outcome of land degradation is a substantial
reduction in the productivity of the land.The major
stresses on vulnerable land include:
Acceleratedsoil erosionby wind and water
Soil acidificationand the formation ofacid sulfate soil
resulting in barren soil
Soil alkalinisationowing to irrigation with water containing
sodium bicarbonateleading to poorsoil structureand
reduced crop yields
Soil salinationin irrigated land requiringsoil salinity control
to reclaim the land[8]
Soil waterloggingin irrigated land which calls for some
form ofsubsurface land drainageto remediate the
negative effects[8]
Destruction ofsoil structureincluding loss of
organic matter

Carrying capacity

Thecarrying capacityof a biologicalspeciesin anenvironmentis the

maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain
indefinitely, given the food,habitat,waterand other necessities available in
the environment.
In population biology, carrying capacity is defined as the environment's
maximal load,which is different from the concept of population equilibrium.
For the human population, more complex variables such assanitationand
medical care are sometimes considered as part of the necessary
establishment. As population density increases,birth rateoften decreases
anddeath ratetypically increases.
The difference between the birth rate and the death rate is the "natural
increase". The carrying capacity could support a positive natural increase,
or could require a negative natural increase.
Thus, the carrying capacity is the number of individuals an environment
can support without significant negative impacts to the given organism and
its environment. Below carrying capacity, populations typically increase,
while above, they typically decrease. A factor that keeps population size at
equilibrium is known as aregulating factor. Population size decreases
above carrying capacity due to a range of factors depending on thespecies
concerned, but can include insufficient space,food supply, orsunlight.

Carrying Capacity
The carrying capacity of an environment may vary for
different species and may change over time due to a
variety
of
factors,
including:
food
availability,
water supply, environmental conditions and living space.
The origins of the term carrying capacity are uncertain
with researchers variously stating that it was used "in
the context of internationalshipping"or that it was first
used during 19th Century laboratory experiments with
micro-organisms. A recent review finds the first use of
the term in an 1845 report by theUS Secretary of State
to the Senate.
Supporting Capacity of a region or system provide an
assessment of the stock available resources with their
regenerative on natural or sustainable basis.
Assimilating capacity of carrying capacity is an
assessment of the maximum amount of pollution load
that can be discharged without violating the best
designated use of the basic components of environment.

Green Accounting

Green accounting incorporates environmental assets and their source

and sink functions into national and corporate accounts. It is the popular
term for environmental and natural resource accounting. Corporate
environmental accounts have not yet found wide application; proposed
concepts and methods are similar to those of national green accounting
and are not further discussed here.
Conventional national accounts largely ignore:
new or newly observed scarcities of natural resources, which threaten to
undermine the sustainability of economic performance and growth, and
environmental degradation as an external (social) cost of
economic activity.
Further critique refers to a possible distortion from counting
environmental protection expenditures as an increase in national
income, despite the fact that such defensive expenditure tends to
maintain, rather than increase, the welfare of society.
In response, the United Nations issued in 1993 and revised in 2003 a
handbook
on
a
System for integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA).

The Approach: Incorporating Natures

Assets
SEEA introduces natures environmental and
economic assets and the environmental cost of
their degradation and depletion into the System of
National Accounts (SNA). The asset accounts
measure the value of opening and closing stocks of
economic and environmental assets, and their
changes during an accounting period. Changes in
assets are brought about by the formation and
consumption of produced and natural capital
(assets) and other non-economic influences such as
discoveries, natural disasters or natural
regeneration. The latter, i.e. other asset changes,
are recorded outside the income and production
accounts; these changes do not, therefore, affect
the conventional indicators of cost, income, product
and capitalformation.

Aggregation and Valuation

National environmental accounting requires adding up
inputs, outputs and environmental impacts, and combining
them into environmentally adjusted (greened) indicators.
The SEEA uses both monetary values (prices, costs) and
physical weights (in particular the mass of material flows) to
this end.
Environmentalists criticize the use of market values for
pricing the priceless categories of nature. In their view,
assessing environmental assets and their services in
monetary terms commodities nature, whose intrinsic value
should not be subjected to market preferences. They prefer
measuring environmental impacts by physical indicators and
aggregating
material
flows
through
the
economy
(throughput) in material flow accounts. However, weighting
nature by the weight of materials and pollutants assigns
doubtful significance (in tonnes) to diverse environmental
impacts such as the depletion of a timber tract, emission of a
toxic pollutant or the extinction of a cherished species

Aggregation and Valuation

Case studies of green accounting applied market
valuation mostly to natural resource depletion. In
the absence of market prices for non-produced
natural assets, natural resource rents earned by
selling resource outputs in markets are used for
estimating the net present value and value
changes (notably from depletion) of an asset. For
environmental degradation, maintenance costs
of avoiding or mitigating environmental impacts
can be applied. A few studies used damage
valuations of environmental impacts. Such
welfare
measurement
and
valuation
are
characteristic of cost-benefit analyses of projects
and programmers; they are not compatible,
however, with the market pricing and costing of
the national accounts.