Land use change and management

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   1. Land use change and management

Geographical features presented in Figure 1. Delineation of the region based on landscape type and ranks for usability status exist in working directory of gisserver//GIS//CDB features called CentralAsia.

Table 1. Alphabetic order of GIS layers in Central Asian feature

#	Layer name	Shape type	Description
	ADMCAC	Polygon	Administrative boundary of Central Asian countries in province wise scale
	Capital	Point	Capital of Central Asian countries
	Center	Point	Cities located in centers of provinces
	Cities	Polygon	Cities including located in districts with areal description
	City	Point	Cities including located in districts with point description
	Evrasia	Polygon	Regional delineation of Evrasia
	Grid	Polyline	Grids with parallels and meridians
	Irrigated_Land	Polygon	Irrigated land of Central Asia extracted by MODIS images
	Lake	Polygon	Main lakes
	Land_Type	Polygon	Delineation of land types such as forest, steppes, desserts and so on
	Landscape	Polygon	Landscape types such as depression, plain, plateau and mountain areas
	Province	Polyline	Boundary of provinces presented with polylines
	Railway	Polyline	Main railways
	Rainfall	Polygon	Categorized rainfall presented with filled isolines
	Region	Polygon	Overall boundary of the region
	Relief	Polygon	Categorized filled horizontals of relief
	Reservoir	Polygon	Main Reservoirs
	River	Polyline	Main rivers with streams
	State	Polygon	Administrative boundary of Central Asian countries

In this exercise, GIS base functions such as conversion tools of polygon to raster, polyline density, point density, Euclidean distance and weighted overlay which are able to run using QGIS will be used to evaluate land suitability assessment in Central Asia.

1. 
   Install QGIS if you do not have in your system!
   

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  Press windows icon in keyboard and write cmd.exe and press ENTER, command line window will appear
  
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  Use command line and write: cd gisserver/softs/gis/QGIS_R_installer/ and press ENTER
  
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  Write a next line: install.bat and ENTER, it calls install.bat window for both R and QGIS installation:
  
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    1 – Install QGIS
    
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    2 – Install QGIS Plugins
    
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    3 – Install R-Packegts
    
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    0 – Exit
    
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  Please write 1 to install QGIS and fallow to accept installing windows to complete installation
  
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  Do the same and write 2 to install QGIS Plugins, fallow and complete installation
  

2. 
   Opening QGIS project
   

1. 
   Press windows icon in keyboard and write QGIS Desktop  press enter to open project  save project in the working directory D://CDB/CentralAsia/project folder  write name as “rasterize”
   

3. 
   Rasterize_polygons_into_raster_using_attributes'>Rasterize polygons into raster using attributes
   

2. 
   Select D://CDB/CentralAsia/shape folder from Browser Panel and existing features appear
   
3. 
   Double click on  Landscape.shp to enter layer into Layers Panel
   

Rasterize vector data

4. 
   Click on Raster  Conversion  Rasterize (Vector to Raster). The tool dialog will appear.
   
5. 
   Set it up like this:
   

6. 
   Repeat steps from 3 to 5 in order to convert each features of “Land_Type”, “Relief” and “Rainfall” into raster module.
   

4. 
   Rasterize points into raster using Grid interpolation method
   

7. 
   Go to main menu and Click Raster  Analysis Grid (Interpolation)
   
   
8. 
   Fill Grid (Interpolation) window as follow and click OK to finalize operation:
   
   1. 
      Input file: click and dropdown Input file array select City shape file
      
   2. 
      Mark Z field section and select ZPOP_THOUS field from attributes
      
   3. 
      Mark algorithm section and select a method “Inverse distance to a power”
      
      
9. 
   In order to reclassify continues raster into discrete use Raster Calculator  Look at the further steps through 18-19 and classify into 8 classes:
   

(( "Popdensity@1" <= 10 ) * 1 + ( ( "Popdensity@1" >= 11 ) AND ( "Popdensity@1" <= 20 ) ) * 2 + ( ("Popdensity@1">= 21 ) AND ("Popdensity@1"<= 30 ) ) * 3 + ( ("Popdensity@1">= 31 ) AND ("Popdensity@1" <= 40 ) ) * 4 + ( ("Popdensity@1" >= 41 ) AND ("Popdensity@1"<= 50 ) ) * 5 + ( ("Popdensity@1">= 51 ) AND ("Popdensity@1" <= 60 ) ) * 6 + ( ("Popdensity@1">= 61 ) AND ("Popdensity@1" <= 90 ) ) * 7 + ("Popdensity@1" >= 91 ) * 8)

5. 
   Rasterize polylines into raster and reclassification
   

10. 
    Click VectorGeometry ToolsExtract nodes: in order to convert River networks as polylines into points extracting by nodes for further estimation of density.
    
    
11. 
    Dropdown Input layer section and select  River shape file.
    
12. 
    Click Node’s section and select  Create temporary layer
    
    

13. 
    Click Plugins  Manage and Install Plugins… from main menu to activate required function for instance Heatmap
    

14. 
    Write  Heatmap into search panel in Plugins window  select Heatmap function  and click Upgrade all button
    

Note: Installed button provides you functions that installed plugins!

15. 
    Go to main menu and click Raster  and select Heatmap
    

16. 
    Fill as follow the Heat Plugin window:
    
    1. 
       Input point layer: select  Nodes as temporary shape file of River network
       
    2. 
       In the Output raster section select a path to the working directory where raster catalog located in CDB/CentralAsia/raster/ and write a name of new raster filename as RiverDens, respectively.
       
    3. 
       In the Output format section select GeoTIFF
       
    4. 
       In the Radius section write as 100 000 meaning we will suppose lands around 50 km radius potentially arable lands
       
17. 
    Click OK from plugin window when you fill all sections same as like instruction or below the picture.
    

18. 
    Click RasterRaster Calculator…
    

19. 
    Enter the expression as follow to reclassify River density continues raster into 8 classes: (( "RiverDens@1" <= 10 ) * 1 + ( ( "RiverDens@1" >= 11 ) AND ( "RiverDens@1" <= 30 ) ) * 2 + ( ( "RiverDens@1" >= 31 ) AND ( "RiverDens@1" <= 60 ) ) * 3 + ( ( "RiverDens@1" >= 61 ) AND ( "RiverDens@1" <= 90 ) ) * 4 + ( ( "RiverDens@1" >= 91 ) AND ( "RiverDens@1" <= 120 ) ) * 5 + ( ( "RiverDens@1" >= 121 ) AND ( "RiverDens@1" <= 150 ) ) * 6 + ( ( "RiverDens@1" >= 151 ) AND ( "RiverDens@1" <= 200 ) ) * 7 + ( "RiverDens@1" >= 201 ) * 8)
    
    

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Figure 1. Delineation of the region based on landscape type and ranks for usability status

1. 
   Click Processing and select Toolbox from main menu and Processing Toolbox will appear
   
2. 
   Write “density” into the searching section of Processing Toolbox in order to find a density extention
   
   
3. 
   Double click on  Kernel density estimation  from SAGA geoalgorithms Raster Creation Tools section
   
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Table 2

Category by ranking	Landscape	Land type	Relief	Rainfall	Categorize Irrigated land
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10	Depression Plain Plateau Hills Foothills Mountain valley Mountains High mountains	Coniferous forests Deciduous forests Wooded steppe Steppes and semidese Semi-deserts Deserts Salt deserts Mountain deserts Alpine meadows	0-50 50-100 100-200 200-500 500-1000 1000-2000 2000-3500	<50 50-100 100-200 200-500 500-1000 1000-2000 2000-3500	Criteria to select most suitable lands

Irrigated agro-ecosystem / potential area of out-scaling raised bed technology	Similarity criteria
Land use	Irrigated land
Slope, degree	0-5
Water availability/source	Sufficient water resources
Soil (texture), clay content, %	10-75 physical clay
Soil salinity, %	< 8 dS m^-1
Rainfed agro-ecosystem / potential area of for out-scaling conservation agriculture	Similarity criteria
Precipitation	300-600
Slope, degree	<7
Land use	Cropland
Soil (texture), clay content, %	20-75 physical clay
Mountain agro-ecosystem / potential area for out-scaling pasture environment	Similarity criteria
Slope, degree	>7
Precipitation	>500
Altitude, m	>800
Land use	Exclude inconvenient areas (rocks, gullies etc.
Soil depth, cm	>50
Rangelands agro-ecosystem / potential area for out-scaling pasture improvement	Similarity criteria
Land use	Rangelands, pasture
Slope, degree	>12
Degradation degree	Areas with week, medium to strong degradation as well as the Bareland areas
Livestock density per ha	Areas with high and moderate livestock density
Watering points/ha	Data not available