Dynamics of Land Cover-Land Use in Villages of the Vietnam Northern Mountain Region: Impacts of Human Activitie

要旨

This paper relates land cover-land use in three villages of the Vietnam's Northern Mountain Region to a variety of potential socio-economic influences on the villages' land use practices. The villages are inhabited by different ethnic groups, including ethnic minority groups and the ethnic Vietnamese majority. Land cover-land use of the villages is drawn from satellite and airborne images from the 1950s to 2000. The analysis has revealed the increase in agricultural land and decrease in forest land until the 1980s and the opposite trends afterward. This suggests a shift of determinant factors of the process of land use changes from population or subsistence economy to cash economy and land and forest resources governance. By presenting different patterns of land use changes in the three villages, this paper subjects this claim to an empirical test. Note: Land cover refers to the physical condition of the ground surface, for example, forest, grassland, concrete pavement etc., while land use reflects human activities such as the use of the land, for example, industrial zones, residential zones, agricultural fields etc. Generally land cover does not coincide with land use. A land use class is composed of several land covers.