An eco-regional approach to agricultural land use planning in Himachal Pradesh, India using Geographic Information Systems

摘要

Eco-regional research in the Hindu-Kush-Himalayan region has an enormous potential because of its diversity in agro-ecological zoncs, farming systems and social and political settings (ICIMOD. 2003; ISNAR 2004). Over 150 million people live within anddepend upon this fragile landscape and anthropogenic activities have many influences on the natural resources. Therefore, investments in agricultural research in the HKH region is being increasingly targeted at those agro-climatic zones and issues wherethe economic and environmental benefits may be expected to be optimized. This first requires that the zones themselves are defined along with information on crop diversification within agro-climatic zones. Agro-ecological Donation (AEZ) is a method to cluster determinants of agricultural systems into homogeneous production domains. The increasing pressures on the environment in combination with the necessity to provide food security for all make the availability of such information crucial to plannersand policy makers. This paper focuses on a methodological approach to agro-ecological zonation in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh in North-Western India. Climatic, lopological and Remote Sensing datasels are used to create a dynamic AE7 map which can be used by decision makers tailored to their specific needs. The concept of a dynamic map which can be queried to delineate production domains based on productivity, climatic, and altitudinal ranges has an added value over traditionally static AEZmaps.