Change in climate and land use is the main cause of increasing streamflow and soil erosion. However, very few studies have investigated these changes on a basin scale. Thus, this study used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) method to evaluate the effects of both land use and climate change effects on streamflow, sediment yield, and soil loss in the Nam Rom River Basin, Northwest of Vietnam. The outputs of the SWAT model demonstrated it to be a strong tool in predicting catchment hydrology, sediment transport, and soil loss. Meanwhile, based on SWAT model simulation, it was found that reforestation and management practices executed between 1992 and 2015 strongly contributed to the decreased sediment yield. The potential for climate change clearly leads to an increase to sediment yield and significantly more soil loss. The combined climate and land use change analysis indicated that land use planning could be adopted to mitigate streamflow (16.9%) and sediment load (4.9%) in the future, in conjunction with the projected direct impact of climate change. In conclusion, the findings in the present study contribute useful knowledge, methods, and techniques that could be reapplied to other regions in Vietnam and the world in terms of land and water conservation.
Land resources potential assessment is a valuable method for orienting land use planning in the world as well as in Vietnam.The objectives of the study are (1) to assess land suitability and (2) to orient the effective use of agricultural land in the study area. Results indicated that Ham Thuan Bac has 107 land mapping units (LMU), in which includes 11 land-use types (LUTs) such as rice, corn, cassava and sweet potato, sugarcane, grass for livestock, vegetables, green dragon fruit, rubber, coffee, and other fruit trees. Agricultural land with high suitability (S1) and moderately suitable (S2) for mostly LUTs is small, however, marginally suitable (S3) and not suitable land (N) are quite large. More than 50% of the LUTs for growing rice, rubber, coffee, other fruit are not suitable; the remaining LUTs have unsuitable land ranging from 10.76% to 25.16% of agricultural land in the district. Based on land suitability classification, we propose to keep 8550 ha with S1, S2, and a part of S3 area to be irrigated for cultivating rice; 9071.7ha of dragon fruit land including 694.67 ha of S1 and 8377.03 ha of S2 land; and only cultivate annual crops, fruit trees and grazing grass on the land with suitble levels from S1 to S3 of the current status.The remainingareas ofS3 and N for riceand areas of S2 and S3for green dragon fruit under S2, S3with active and semi-active irrigation regimeswill be converted to annual crops and fruit trees and grass for livestock.
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