BUILDING LAND SUITABILITY MAPS FOR PERENNIAL CROPS IN THE BUFFER ZONE OF TA DUNG NATIONAL PARK BASED ON DETAILED LAND MAPPING UNIT AND NONLINEAR PLANNING

Abstract

This study aims to improve the accuracy and efficiency in building land suitability maps for some perennial crops in the buffer zone of Ta Dung National Park based on the detailed land mapping unit (LMU), FAO's land suitability classification method combined with nonlinear planning. The main data layers used to build LMU include soil type, rock outcrops, soil texture, terrain slope, and irrigation conditions. To increase the granularity of the LMU, a sub-layer is built based on the distance to the road and the Strahler order of the sub-basin. Accoding to the land suitability classification, it shows that coffee has a low degree of suitability in this area, on the contrary, macadamia and durian are very suitable and need to convert part of the cultivated land coffee to these crops. With a land use plan determined based on nonlinear planning methods with constraints on area of land use types, production costs and objective function is profit or benefit-cost ratio, the area percentage of area of durian, coffee and intercropping of coffee with macadamia was determined to be 30%, 50% and 20% respectively. The land use plan map also shows the economic efficiency of these crop area ratios, although there is an increase in production costs of only 9% but net profit has increased by over 40%. Increased economic efficiency will contribute to stabilizing people's lives and limiting negative impacts on the landscape from livelihood activities.