Sustainable Use of Land

 

Land is one of the most important natural resources on Earth. It refers to the Earth’s terrestrial surface consisting of forests, deserts, human settlement areas and agricultural lands. Land is essential for the provision of food, water and energy for many living systems and is critical to human activity.

Land is used spatially (water reservoirs) and temporally (shifting cultivation, dumping grounds) for many purposes.

Agriculture and Forestry

The two dominant land use activities are agriculture and forestry. Agro-ecosystems cover more than a quarter of the global land area. Agricultural land use depends on the types of crops and agronomics systems which can vary from intensively managed monocultures, to more organic systems involving annual and perennial crops. Over most of the history, including much of the 20^th century, agricultural output has increased primarily bringing more land into production through conversion of forests and natural grasslands.

Extractive purposes

By mining and quarrying valuable minerals and geological material are extracted from the Earth for various industries. Due to this activity, land is degraded and land structure is altered.

Residential and institutional land uses

Residential land uses involves single-family dwellings or apartment buildings which can support large densities of human populations. Institutional land uses are mostly associated with land that is occupied by public buildings such as schools, universities, government office buildings, art galleries and museums. These facilities are most commonly located in urban or suburban areas.

Environmental sanitation and health

Area  for waste disposal and parks.

Recreational land use

Denotes specific activities and pursuits, which may range from informal reaction in the countryside to more formalized leisure pursuits in an urban setting such as a sports complex, cinema or gambling casino.

Industrial land use

Industrial areas include a wide array of land uses from light manufacturing to heavy manufacturing plants. Heavy industries use raw materials such as iron core, coal and steel.

The Concept of Sustainable Land Use

Sustainable land use is a complex concept which deals with technologies, policies and activities of land use. It can be defined as a practice that maintains and retains quantity and productivity of land resources from generation to generation while meeting current and long-term needs of society and maximizing net benefits through conservation of resources to maintain other ecosystem services and functions.

Land is not a simple commodity that can be stored and replaces, destroyed and remade, or even recycled in exactly the same way as manufactured goods. It is a complex and biological system, built up over long periods of time. To restore its capacity have to be tailored to the specific problems at hand. In this regard, reliable information on people’s needs and land resources is required. For this land use planning is essential.