Land-Use Optimization and Allocation for Saltwater Intrusion Regions: A Case Study in Soc Trang Province, Vietnam

Abstract

Land-use planning plays an important role in agricultural development, however it lacks tools to support planner in proposing land-use planning solutions especially, under saltwater intrusion condition in the coastal regions. This study aims to apply optimization in analyzing land-use solutions for agricultural land-use planning. In which a multi-objective optimization model is developed to optimize land-use area including land-use allocation taking into account socio-economic and environmental factors. The model has been applied in three districts of Soc Trang province, Vietnam (Long Phu, My Xuyen and Tran De) representing three ecological regions including salt water, brackish water and freshwater in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The results showed that two multi-objective optimization scenarios (in terms of profit, labor, environment benefits and risk reduction) have been implemented: (i) Multi-objective optimization of agricultural land-use until 2030 under normal conditions; (ii) Optimizing agricultural land-use until 2030 under climate change conditions similar to the 2016 drought and saltwater intrusion phenomenon in the Mekong Delta. The results showed that the second scenario is the option considered for implementing land-use plan thanks to the balance between good profits and minimizing economic and environmental risk. The land allocation was carried out taking into account household economic, the influence of adjacent production types, local traffic and canal systems factors to allocate optimal land-use areas. The combination of land-use optimization and spatial allocation process can help planners improve the quality of agricultural land-use planning.

Saltwater Intrusion and Agricultural Land Use Change in Nga Nam, Soc Trang, Vietnam

“…Among the natural factors, the saltwater intrusion status was considered to be important by the experts, while acid-sulfate-contaminated soils, flooding, and drought were less considered (Figure 11a). The experts believe that the progress of saltwater intrusion has become more and more complicated because of global climate change [38,40]. Therefore, the damage caused by saltwater intrusion to crop yield was more severe, though farmers and local governments had approaches to adapt and mitigate saltwater intrusion.…”

“…The Mekong Delta is such an important agricultural producing region in Vietnam that sustains national and international food security [34]. However, in the past few years, the Mekong Delta has been considered to be a region that is heavily affected by saltwater intrusion due to climate change [35][36][37][38][39][40]. The Mekong Delta is particularly impacted by both sea level rise and saltwater intrusion [34,38,41,42].…”