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We assessed soil site suitability for selected winter crops in the coastal saline agro-ecological environment of Sagar Island, India by integrating land limitation and crop suitability evaluation framework of FAO. Grid based (1 km by 1 km) soil sampling and estimation of important soil quality attributes were measured in the laboratory following standard procedures. Geo-statistical and visualization methods were applied to match the soil suitability for selected crops. The weights of crop specific soil parameters have been assigned through PCA analysis. The inverse distance weighting interpolation and reclassification methods were adopted for generation of spatial layers of those soil attributes. Nearly 61% area (14,618 ha GA) of the Island is under agricultural landuse (AL), mostly dominated (>75% of AL) by lowland rice-fallow mono-cropping. Soils are highly suitable (S1) for growing sunflower while moderately suitable (S2) for growing chilli, mustard and potato crops. The grid-wise georeferenced soil data information generated in this study will help in periodic monitoring of soil quality in spatio-temporal dimensions for devising location specific soil health managements in the Island. The methodology used in estimating soil quality index and crop specific soil suitability analysis in spatial format will help in replicating such studies in other such coastal Islands of Indian Sub-continent.

The continual increase in the incidence of Petrol Filling Stations (PFSs) in Nigerian urban centers, and its intrusion of into residential and commercial hubs requires the intervention of landuse planning. It is against this background that this study investigates the incidence and landuse characteristics of PFSs in Ogbomoso Township. To achieve this, an inventory of PFSs in the Ogbomoso Township was made, where 48 PFSs were identified. Thereafter, a ring of 50 meters radius was delineated around each identified filling stations, and landuse characterization of the delineated area was done. Also, the road characteristics of abutting road to the PFS were obtained. To model the incidence of PFSs, another 15 rings of 50 meters radius were randomly delineated in areas without PFSs. Pearson Product Moment Correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationship between the incidence of Petrol Filling Stations (IPFS), Commercial Landuse Area (CLA), Residential Landuse Area (RLA) and Road Characteristics Index, while Multiple Regression Analysis was used to calibrate the relationship between IPFS, RLA, CLA and RCI. The study discovered that, out of the 48 identified PFSs, 89.6% are functional and 10.4% are not functional. With r= - 0.755, p=0.000; there is a strong negative relationship between IPFS and RLA, thus indicating the gradual replacement of residential areas for PFSs. To predict the incidence of PFSs in any area in Ogbomoso town, the model PFSs= -0.734RLA - 0.518CLA - 0.093RCI was calibrated. The study concluded that with sustained economic growth in Ogbomoso Town, there will be an increase in incidence of PFSs and its continuous intrusion into residential and commercial hubs. It therefore recommended development control and introduction of incentives for reuse of abandoned PFSs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If South Africa’s Gauteng Province is to become a more ‘sustainable’, urbanised region, attention needs to be paid to building a transportation network that aligns with sustainable development principles. Currently, public transport passenger levels are low, whilst the geographical area it serves is large and becoming larger. This study analysed the long term, historical transportation trends of Gauteng by comparing four transport studies undertaken between 1975 and 2003. It reveals that an adherence to the ‘predict and provide’ transportation planning model has systematically enhanced road infrastructure over rail, and private over public transport. Effective, efficient and low cost public transport has been systematically under-provisioned; while a reliance on private vehicles is now entrenched and systemic. Racial segregation, spatial apartheid and weak urban land use planning, has resulted in an entrenched, low-density urban sprawl. Lastly, there is the need to collect comparable, longitudinal transportation data, if the successes and failures of policies are to be monitored.

Ambon City is the center of national activities in Maluku province, established under Presidential Decree 77 issued in 2014 about spatial planning of Maluku Islands. Ambon is a strategic region in terms of development in agriculture and fisheries sectors. Development of the region caused this area to be extremely vulnerable to the issues on water security. Seven watersheds which are Air Manis, Hutumury, Passo, Tulehu, Wae Batu Merah, Wae Lela and Wae Sikula affect the water system in Ambon City. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the impact of climate and land use change on water availability in seven watersheds in Ambon City. The analysis was performed using a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) Model in order to analyze climate changes on the period of 1987-1996 (past), of 2004-2013 (present) and climate projection on the period 2035s (future) and equally to analyze land use data in 1996 and 2014. The results of the research indicated that land use in the study area has changed since 1996 to 2014. Forest area decreased around 32.45%, while residential areas and agriculture land increased 56.01% and 19.80%, respectively. The results of SWAT model presented the water availability amount to 1,127,011,350 m3/year on the period of 1987-1996. During the period of 2004-2013, it has been reduced to 1,076,548,720 m3/year (around 4.48% decrease). The results of the prediction of future water availability in the period of 2035s estimated a decrease of water availability around 4.69% (1,026,086,090 m3/year). Land use and climate change have greatly contributed to the water availability in seven watersheds of Ambon City. Ambon City is in need of land use planning especially the application of spatial plan. The maintenance of forest area is indispensable. In built-up areas, it is essential to implement green space and water harvesting in order to secure water availability in the future.

ABSTRAK Evaluasi sumberdaya lahan sangat penting dalam perencanaan penggunaan lahan karena perencanaan penggunaan lahan yang baik harus didasarkan pada tingkat kesesuaian lahan dan kemampuan lahan. Penelitian ini bertujuan (1) mengevaluasi potensi penggunaan lahan pertanian berdasarkan analisis kemampuan lahan dan kesesuaian lahan, (2) menganalisis rencana penggunaan lahan pertanian berkelanjutan dan (3) menyusun pola spasial penggunaan lahan pertanian berkelanjutan di Kecamatan Pulau Ternate, Kota Ternate, Provinsi Maluku Utara. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan keruangan dengan bentuklahan sebagai satuan unit analisis yang disusun berdasarkan interpretasi Citra Landsat TM band 457, Peta RBI dan peta geologi dengan skala peta 1 : 50.000. Analisis klasifikasi kemampuan lahan menggunakan sistem matching dan software LCLP (Land Classification and Land Use Planning). Hasil penelitian menunjukkan : Kecamatan Pulau Ternate memiliki kelas kemampuan lahan III, VI, VII dan VIII. Kelas kemampuan lahan VI mendominasi wilayah penelitian dengan luas lahan 3000.42 Ha (57,04%).Tanaman cengkeh dan pala dapat dikembangkan pada satuan bentuklahan lereng kaki gunungapi (V5) seluas 1699.27 Ha (32,30 %). Pola spasial pengembangan lahan pertanian berkelanjutan untuk penggembalaan terbatas, hutan lindung dan hutan kayu diusahakan pada lahan kelas kemampuan VI,sedangkan lahan kelas kemampuan VII dan VIII untuk hutan lindung dan cagar alam. Lahan kelas kemampuan III yang dapat digarapuntuk pertanian ekstensif dikembangkan tanaman cengkeh dan pala dengan teknologi konservasi sedang.Untuk memperbaiki kesuburan tanah dan menekan terjadinya degradasi lahan, maka penelitian ini merekomendasikan perlu dilakukan tindakan pemupukan serta penggunaan lahan dengan mempertimbangkan kemampuan lahan dan kesesuaian lahan di daerah penelitian. ABSTRACT Land resources evaluation of are very important in landuse planning because landuse planning must be based on the land suitability and land capabilityclasses. Theresearch aimed to :(1) evaluate the potential landuse of agricultural based on land capability and suitability analysis of land, (2) landuse planning analyzing the sustainable agricultural and (3) compile of the spatial patterns sustainable agriculture landuse in the Subdistrict Ternate Island, of Ternate City, of the North Maluku Province. This research applied spatial approach where the landform asanalysis unit which is based on interpretation of Landsat TM band 457, Map RBI and geological maps with map scale 1: 50.000. Land capability classification analysis using matching system and software LCLP (Land Classification and Land Use Planning). The results showedthat :the Subdistrict Ternate Island hadseveral classes of land capability ranged from class III, VI, VII and VIII. The land capability class of VI dominated the research regions with a land area 3000.42 ha (57,04%).Plant cloves and nutmeg can be developed on the foot slopes of volcanic landform units (V5) of area 1699.27 ha (32,30%). The spatial pattern of sustainable agricultural development of land for grazing is limited, protected forests and woods cultivated on land capability classes VI, while land capability class VII and VIII for protected forest and nature reserves.Land capability class III could becultivatedfor the extensive agriculture can be developedfor cloves and nutmeg with moderate conservation technologies.To improve soil fertility and pressing land degradation, this study recommending fertilization necessary action and landuse by considering land capability and suitability of land ini the research area.

ABSTRAK Evaluasi daya dukung lingkungan merupakan bagian dari upaya mewujudkan pembangunan berkelanjutan. Salah satu metoda evaluasi daya dukung lingkungan adalah evaluasi berbasis kemampuan lahan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melakukan evaluasi daya dukung lingkungan berbasis kemampuan lahan di Tuban, Jawa Timur. Evaluasi dilakukan dengan mengkaji kesesuaian antara kemampuan lahan dengan penggunaan lahan aktual dan alokasi Pola Ruang dalam Rencana Tata Ruang Wilayah Kabupaten. Kemampuan lahan dievaluasi pada setiap Satuan Peta Lahan yang diperoleh dari survai lapangan tahun 2014. Penggunaan lahan aktual dianalisis menggunakan citra Landsat 8 OLI tahun peliputan 2013. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa kemampuan lahan di wilayah penelitian berkisar dari kemampuan lahan kelas II sampai kelas VIII. Wilayah dengan kemampuan lahan yang memungkinkan untuk pengusahaan budidaya (kelas II-IV) mencakup 78,6% wilayah studi, sementara wilayah yang tidak memungkinkan untuk budidaya (kelas V-VIII) mencakup 21,4% wilayah studi. Faktor pembatas kemampuan lahan terdiri dari tekstur tanah, kedalaman efektif, drainase, lereng dan genangan/banjir. Saat ini, 32% wilayah di Kabupaten Tuban penggunaan lahannya sesuai dengan kemampuan lahannya, 66,4% wilayah digunakan melebihi kemampuan lahannya. Dalam hal alokasi lahan pada pola ruang, 67,3% wilayah dialokasikan penggunaan lahannya sesuai dengan kemampuan lahannya, sedangkan 31% dialokasikan melebihi kemampuan lahannya. Temuan ini dapat digunakan untuk mengontrol penggunaan lahan di Kabupaten Tuban dan menjadi bahan revisi Rencana Tata Ruang Wilayah Kabupaten agar penggunaan lahan dialokasikan sesuai dengan kemampuan lahannya. ABSTRACT Evaluation of the environmental carrying capacity should be done as part of sustainable land use planning. One of the method to evaluate carrying capacity is land capability based evaluation. This study aims to evaluate the land capability based carrying capacity of Tuban Regency, East Java Province. Evaluation is done by assessing the conformity between the land capability with current land utilization and land allocation of the Official Spatial Planning of the Regency. Land capability was evaluated for each land unit, which was obtained from soil survey, done in 2014. The current land use is analyzed using LANDSAT 8 OLI imagery of 2013. The results showed that the land capability in research areas was ranged from class III to class VIII. Area with land capability which support the agricultural uses (class I-IV) is 78.6% of total area, while the area which should not be used for agricultural cultivation (class V-VIII) was 21,4% of the total area. Factors limiting the land cability include soil texture, effective depth, drainage, slope, and flood. The area covering 32% of Tuban Regency is used in accordance with land capability, 66.4% is used exceeding land capability. There are 31% of the area that has been allocated in Official Spatial Planning of the Regency exceeds the land capabilities, while 67.3% has been allocated in accordance with land capability. The research result can be used as input to control land utilization in Tuban Regency as well as input for Official Land Use Planning revision.

Nile River has about 144 islands from Aswan to the Mediterranean Sea. In this research remotely sensed images have been used for the assessment of land cover changes in the Al-Monib island as part of an ongoing sustainable development of this island. The island has witnessed high rates of change in land use in the past few years. An urbanization process continues and it causes serious increases in urban areas while decreasing the amount of green areas. The most common use of many of the change detection algorithms has been to identify the change in coarse to medium spatial resolution satellite imagery. Now there is great interest in identifying the change in high spatial resolution multispectral data such as SPOT5 and QuickBird. In order to improve the quality and accuracy, different cues have been extracted such as IHS or PCA and texture derived from color image. Fuzzy classification has been performed several times utilizing from Multi-Cue integration (resulted into six classifications) for each date. Assessment of different approaches of classification (six classifications) has been performed for each date. After that fuzzy post classification comparison has been made for the best case. Value of the urban expansions for the period of 2002–2009 was calculated as 0.11 km2. The urban expansion rate had been realized as 3.04%. Another significant change was the decline in agricultural lands result was estimated to be 8.29%. The changes of landscape pattern were then analyzed using a series of spatial metrics (class level) which were derived from FRAGSTATS software.

Surface water flooding is currently viewed as the most serious water-related issue in many of the China’s large cities due to rapid urbanization, land-use change and the process of rapid socio-economic development. In 2014, the People’s Republic of China established the concept of the ‘Sponge City’, which will be used to tackle urban surface-water flooding and related urban water management issues, such as purification of urban runoff, attenuation of peak run-off and water conservation. The concept is being developed to make use of ‘blue’ and ‘green’ spaces in the urban environment for stormwater management and control. It is envisaged that related practices will enhance natural ecosystems and provide more aesthetically pleasing space for the people that live and work in urban environments, in addition enabling nature-based solutions to improve urban habitats for birds and other organisms. Until recently, grey infrastructure and hard engineering-based management approaches have been adopted in the rapidly developing Chinese urban environment as urban flood and drainage issues are predominantly managed by municipal water engineers. The Sponge City concept and related guidelines and practices will provide multiple opportunities to integrate ideas from eco-hydrology, climate change impact assessment and planning, and consideration of long-term social and environmental well-being, within the urban land-use planning process. This paper aims to explicate the Sponge city concept and its development, and consider the implications of the transformation of urban land-use planning and urban-water management practice in China. To achieve the dual goals of sustainable water-use and better flood control (as targeted by the Sponge City concept), more effective development and implementation of land-use guidance and assessment tools (with explicit integration of urban flood-risk assessment, land-drainage guidance, climate projection methods, and assessment of long-term sustainability) are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beekeeping is one of the alternative businesses that can be developed without converting the existing land use. Deveoping the business of beekeeping should consider the biophysically suitable area for bees themselves and also for the bee forage availability. The objective of this study was to provide the direction of development area for beekeeping. The methods used consist ofa combination of remote sensing, geographic information system, and analytical hierarchy process. The recommended area for beekeeping in Sukabumi regency consists of two areas: forest and dry land agriculture area. The protected area has two priorities: The first priority area for beekeeping is 3,335.52 ha (6.4%), while second priority is 48,415.22 ha (93.6%) that covered 14 sub-districts. The cultivation area has three priorities: First priority area is 1,163.92 ha, second priorityarea is 6,044.98 ha, and third priority area is 2,651.21 ha that covered 9 sub-districts. Based on result of analysis with the existing beekeeping in Sukabumi regency, local government of Sukabumi regency or local farmer could develop program for beekeeping in such as sub district: Cibadak, Cicurug, Cidahu, Ciemas, Cikidang, Ciracap, Cisolok, Kabandungan, Kadudampit, Kalapanunggal, Nagrak, Pelabuhan Ratu, Sukabumi, Sukaraja, Jampang Kulon, Pabuaran, Sagaranten, Surade, and Tegalbuleud.

Current mobility patterns mean that many trips cross one or several municipal borders. This emphasises the need to integrate land-use and transport planning at regional functional scales. However, the Swedish planning system is characterised by a ‘municipal planning monopoly’, where local governments control the formal planning instruments. The lack of formal means for regional-level planning has sparked initiatives that can be characterised as soft spaces in planning. The paper analyses how soft space planning as spatial strategy making at regional level is influencing local-level planning. The analysis covers 10 municipalities in the Swedish Region of Skåne. The results illustrate that the dialogue-based process has established a broad consensus on the need to consider the regional scale in municipal planning. However, the results also show that the impact on planning is limited since the consensus-based process resulted in strategic objectives with limited influence on prevailing planning practices. Findings also illustrate that key concepts for operationalising the strategies – including densification and public transport accessibility – were defined and used differently in different municipalities. Consequently, a more stringent use, and stricter definitions, of core concepts could be a way to strengthen the capacity of soft space regional planning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The soil-forming factors, especially climate, vegetation and topography, act on a range of rock formations and parent materials leading to the development of different kinds of soils. Through concerted efforts, soil datasets generated earlier are used to develop maps and soil information systems at different scales. Progress in basic and fundamental research on the formation of Indian soils as related to climate, relief, organisms, parent materials and time has helped in developing the soil information system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal areas are marginal regions between the land and sea. These areas have environmental value, but over-development imposes pressures on their ecosystems and brings about a multitude of challenges. Negative environmental impacts such as land-based source pollution are not only limited to land but also have adverse effects on the marine environment. Sustainable land-use planning has been applied to balance economic production, social needs, and environmental conservation in coastal areas. While previous studies have focused on land oriented criteria, they did not consider the interactions with adjacent marine environments. The purpose of this paper is to select criteria and outline the importance of integrating sea and land criteria in the context of land-use planning in coastal areas of Iran. This is the first time that the Decision Making Trial and Laboratory Model (DEMATEL) and Analytical Network Process (ANP) method with fuzzy logic have been used to select land-and sea-oriented criteria for land-use planning. The results illustrate that “biodiversity of fauna and flora at sea,” “area of spawning,” “biodiversity of fauna and flora in land,” “breeding grounds,” and “distribution of fauna and flora at sea” are the five most important criteria for coastal land-use planning. The integrated framework presented in this paper provides a holistic approach for coastal land-use planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nile River has about 144 islands from Aswan to the Mediterranean Sea. In this research remotely sensed images have been used for the assessment of land cover changes in the Al-Monib island as part of an ongoing sustainable development of this island. The island has witnessed high rates of change in land use in the past few years. An urbanization process continues and it causes serious increases in urban areas while decreasing the amount of green areas. The most common use of many of the change detection algorithms has been to identify the change in coarse to medium spatial resolution satellite imagery. Now there is great interest in identifying the change in high spatial resolution multispectral data such as SPOT5 and QuickBird. In order to improve the quality and accuracy, different cues have been extracted such as IHS or PCA and texture derived from color image. Fuzzy classification has been performed several times utilizing from Multi-Cue integration (resulted into six classifications) for each date. Assessment of different approaches of classification (six classifications) has been performed for each date. After that fuzzy post classification comparison has been made for the best case. Value of the urban expansions for the period of 2002–2009 was calculated as 0.11 km 2 . The urban expansion rate had been realized as 3.04%. Another significant change was the decline in agricultural lands result was estimated to be 8.29%. The changes of landscape pattern were then analyzed using a series of spatial metrics (class level) which were derived from FRAGSTATS software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Paphos District has been described as one of the most landslide-prone areas of Cyprus, with landslides impacting villages, roads and other infrastructure. With increasing levels of development and investment in infrastructure, Cypriot authorities are investigating ways to assess landslide susceptibility, hazard and risk for planning purposes. A 2-year project has catalogued over 1,840 landslides, investigated the spatial distribution of key landslide attributes, and used the results to develop maps of landslide susceptibility across large areas of the Paphos District. To gain a better understanding of the materials and failure mechanisms involved, 20 of these landslides were selected for further study, including engineering geological mapping, ground investigation, laboratory testing, development of ground models and slope stability analysis at specific locations. The results enabled soil parameters to be reviewed, thus strengthening the interpretations derived from field observations. The use of the mapping outputs is discussed in terms of planning and engineering applications and recommendations are made for strengthening and expanding the landslide database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to acquire a better insight into a landcover classification scheme which is suitable for representing the climatic properties of Asian megacities. Seoul, Republic of Korea, was used as a testbed. First, landcover classification was performed using Landsat 7 ETM+ using eight landcover types suitable for representing the climatic conditions of Seoul. As a next step, 10 land surface and thermal parameters were estimated for individual landcover classes. Finally, the suitability of the climatologically classified urban landcover scheme was analyzed in two ways. Firstly, the spatial distribution of land surface temperature (LST) was retrieved using the thermal band of Landsat 7 ETM+ and the retrieved LST values over eight landcover classes were statistically analyzed. Secondly, 24-h temperature changes based on both eight landcover classes and four classes were simulated using the meso-scale model MetPhoMod. These were compared with measurement data from 24 automatic weather stations in Seoul. This study showed that the eight landcover classification scheme is suitable for representing the climatic properties of Seoul, which is one of the Asian megacities. Moreover, the eight classes represent the thermal conditions better than the four conventional classes during nighttime, which implies that this eight landcover classification scheme can be useful to analyze the nocturnal urban heat island effect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Water-sensitive planning (WSP) is an approach to sustainable development that integrates water considerations into urban and regional planning. Following a literature survey and a condensed report of our 15 years of studies, the paper presents WSP's goals, domains, principles and practices and the paradigms that underpin them, with special attention to stormwater management. It encompasses all planning scales, from the building lot to the catchment area. The paper ends with suggested generic planning principles that evolved with the growth of WSP but are intended to also serve other domains of planning for sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. Bioassessment has evolved significantly from a method of deciding whether an ecosystem exposed to stressors should ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ (or how badly it fails). Society wants some notion of what has caused any observed degradation of ecosystems, and what management strategies might improve degraded ecosystems. Managers also want to predict what negative or positive effects different land use strategies will have on the component ecosystems of a landscape, including lakes and streams. 2. Here we illustrate an approach to providing these tools to managers with data from a bioassessment study of streams in the Fraser River Basin of British Columbia, Canada. 3. Landscape scale descriptors of both the natural (e.g. catchment size, surficial geology) and stressor (e.g. hard rock mines, forest harvest) environment of each site were used to define the natural and stressor environments of each of the 242 stream sites. 4. We classified 206 reference (relatively unexposed to human activity) sites using their benthic macroinvertebrate community composition, and then discriminated among the faunally defined groups with landscape scale descriptors of the natural environment of the sites. 5. This discriminant function model allowed us to predict which group each of the test sites would be in if it were in reference condition, and then measure the relationship between the amount of human activity and the biota in each of these groups. 6. These relationships were turned into projections of what will happen to a stream ecosystem's biota if the stressor environment is either improved or degraded. These projection models form the basis of evidence-based land use planning that takes into account the health of freshwater ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of sand encroachment in Kuwait using Geographical Information System (GIS) technology has been formulated as a Multi-Criteria Decision Making problem. The Delphi method and Analytical Hierarchy Process were adopted as evaluating techniques, in which experts’ judgments were analyzed for objectively estimating and weighting control factors. Seven triggering factors, depicted in the form of maps, were identified and ordered according to their priority. These factors are (1) wind energy; (2) surface sediment; (3) vegetation density; (4) land use; (5) drainage density; (6) topographic change and (7) vegetation type. The factor maps were digitized, converted to raster data and overlaid to determine their possible spatial relationships. Applying a susceptibility model, a map of sand encroachment susceptibility in Kuwait was developed. The map showed that the areas of very high and high sand encroachment susceptibility are located within the main corridor of sand pathway that coincides with the northwesterly dominant wind direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, severe destruction in Zagros forests is obvious because of environmental and socio-economical problems. In this context, the role of landuse planning in the optimal management of the resources is very important. In this research, landuse planning map was prepared for Sarab Darrehshar catchment in Ilam province, by system analysis method. For this purpose, the maps of slop, aspect and elevation were integrated and then the map of primary ecological units prepared. By integration of this map with maps of soil, plant typology and canopy, the final units map was obtained. Then, this map data and other ecological data driven from other maps, were collected in a table called as region ecological characteristics table. Prioritization of landuse in this study was performed by the modified quantitative and objective method. In the next step, landuse planning map with 18 types of different combination of consistent landuses was performed using ecological models of Iran, ecological capability evaluation model in Zagros forest (prepared in this research) considering socio-economical information of the area. Results indicated that the smallest area belonged to landuse of rural development with 36.7 ha and the largest areas belonged to watershed management, conservation and forestry with 3136, 2853 and 2288 ha, respectively. Areas of 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the quality degrees of forest landuse, were zero, 473, 1085 and 730 ha, respectively. Comparison of current map and landuse planning map revealed that a basic revision on kind and degree of the current activities in the studied catchment is needed.

We assessed soil site suitability for selected winter crops in the coastal saline agro-ecological environment of Sagar Island, India by integrating land limitation and crop suitability evaluation framework of FAO. Grid based (1 km by 1 km) soil sampling and estimation of important soil quality attributes were measured in the laboratory following standard procedures. Geo-statistical and visualization methods were applied to match the soil suitability for selected crops. The weights of crop specific soil parameters have been assigned through PCA analysis. The inverse distance weighting interpolation and reclassification methods were adopted for generation of spatial layers of those soil attributes. Nearly 61% area (14,618 ha GA) of the Island is under agricultural landuse (AL), mostly dominated (>75% of AL) by lowland rice-fallow mono-cropping. Soils are highly suitable (S1) for growing sunflower while moderately suitable (S2) for growing chilli, mustard and potato crops. The grid-wise georeferenced soil data information generated in this study will help in periodic monitoring of soil quality in spatio-temporal dimensions for devising location specific soil health managements in the Island. The methodology used in estimating soil quality index and crop specific soil suitability analysis in spatial format will help in replicating such studies in other such coastal Islands of Indian Sub-continent., Competing Interests: We declare that we have no conflicts of interest., (© 2020 The Authors.)

• This study provides an exploratory tool to map potential activity spaces of different population groups. • It integrates population-representative transportation survey data into a parcel-level urban form analysis. • It explores the method to measure potential social interaction among different population groups. Urban form measures have been increasingly used in multidisciplinary research, yet few studies have conceptualized different meanings of human-scale urban form for various population groups. This study proposes an activity-based approach that builds direct links between urban form measures and travel-activity patterns of various population groups. With a case study on older adults' walking activity in Toronto, this study maps potential activity spaces for each population group, and measures the potential of social interaction at a land-parcel level. Based on a population-representative survey data and an open source routing algorithm, this study provides an exploratory method to conceptualize and measure human-scale urban form for different population groups. Further, this method helps to understand the non-linear relationships between conventional urban form measures and travel-activity patterns, and to inform planning interventions on urban form features that are particularly important for a specific population group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]