Guwahati, May 13: In a first, the state-level nodal agency of the soil conservation department of the Assam government has signed an agreement with Assam Agriculture University (AAU), Jorhat for preparing a land resource inventory (LRI) in the state.
The agreement was signed in accordance with the mandate of the department of land resources under the Union ministry of rural development.
“The study will become an important tool for providing scientific baseline data for planning for future land use, particularly agriculture, because it assesses the land resource and its potential for sustainable agriculture production,” official sources said.
Notably, the LRI has been carried out based on five physical factors – rock, soil, slope, erosion type and severity and vegetation.
“The LRI will help in grouping together the areas, where similar land resources exist on ground, which require the same kind of management, intensity of soil conservation treatment, crops and pasture or forestry species with similar yield potential. It will also help in evaluating the suitability of land for various kinds of use which requires a survey to define and map the land units together with the collection of descriptive data of land characteristics and resources,” sources said.
The LRI provides information about morphological and physico-chemical characteristics of soil and its problems and potentials for best utilisation under a given set of agro-climatic conditions.
The objectives of the land resource inventory are detailed characterisation of all the land resources like soil, water, land use, cropping pattern and other resources available at parcel level in the village; delineation of homogenous areas based on soil-site characteristics into management units, and collection and interpretation of climatic and agronomical data for crop planning.
The LRI aims to help identify problems and potential of the area and strategies for their management; assess suitability of land resources for various crops and other uses and establish village level digital land resources database in a GIS framework.
It also aims to enable the watershed and other line departments to prepare an action plan for the integrated development of the watershed.
The study will cover three watershed projects in Kamrup Metro, Charaideo and Morigaon, covering an area of 12,800 hectares for a period of six months.