An Assessment of saline soil effects on land use activities: A case study in Nakhon Panom Province, Thailand

Abstract

The Northeastern Part of Thailand contains wide area of saline affected soil. Among these, Nakhon Panom Province has received a great deal of attention and thus national budgets in order to raise the economic and social conditions. Many reports have stated that various land uses are likely to be declined due to the salinity problem to some certain extent. However, little to none research has been trying to quantify the effects of such the problem on the land use patterns. This study introduces a simple but practical technique to quantitatively relate the degree of salinity to land use densities. The technique utilizes the multiple linear regression technique to relate the basin salinity index with many land use activities, e.g. community and housing, rice farmings, and livestocks. This method is applied on the subdistrict or "amphoe" units in Nakhon Panom. Initially, the densities of various land use activities are computed based on all secondary data. Subsequently, an equation for basin salinity index (BSI) is formulated in order to figure the severity of salinity problem in specific amphoes. Then, simple linear regression is performed between amphoe BSI and land use densities. Finally, multiple linear regression is obtained linking between the BSI and all the densities. BSI = 23.18 - 176.09 × (population density) - 70.96 × (in-season rice farming density) + 8.17 × (off-season rice farming density) + 55.53 × (cow livestock density) + 3.67 × (poultry livestock density) - 16.19 × (swine livestock density) + 0.00 × (catched fish density). It is found that the salinity has a great negative impact on the population density, in-season rice farming, and swine livestock, while it establishes positive influence on off-season rice farming, cow livestock, and poultry livestock.