Promoting Land Use Assessment and Management
Name of Organization:
Geographical Scope:
Regions:
Country:
Purpose:
- Collect the base-line data for the creation of a comprehensive map and land information system of land use and natural resources for Palestine. This will serve as a tool for the future land use planning.
- Determine the potential environmental and socio-economic value of available land for the purpose of planning.
- Assess existing natural reserves to determine their potential environmental value
- Place emphasis on the fact in order to utilize more efficiently human and institutional capacities, through providing training, research, and technology transfer
- Determine the quality and capacities of national natural resources
- Create awareness among Palestinian decision makers on issues of natural resources management and sustainability
- Formulating strategies and recommendation for future development that are in harmony with sustainable economic growth
- Producing An Atlas of Palestine (West Bank and Gaza)
Area of Governance :
Land Governance
Website of initiative:
Publications:
Funding sources:
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
Source of Data:
Using a combination of own and existing data
Type of Data Collection:
Administrative Data
Aggregation of multiple indicators using various d...
Performance assessment / Desk studies
Specifications of type of data collection:
The data collection and map creation will be possible by compiling source material including:
- A combination of different sets of maps (cadastral maps, British, Israeli, and Jordanian administration maps, topographic maps, soil maps, and climate maps);
- Satellite SPOT and LANDSAT images will also be a useful tool in conveying substantial information on land resource feature ;
- Aerial photography provides an unmapped, unprocessed view of structures in a specific area which will be equally useful for verification purposes ;
- This material will be supplemented with field reconnaissance, a valuable tool in land resource assessment;
- After this has been accomplished, essential data, especially regarding specific environmental and soil features, will be obtained by direct field surveys to increase the capacity of the model. In addition, our own surveys and field work to collect data related to our projects.
Evaluation and Verification Mechanism:
- It is possible that discrepancies might occur in translating the collected data into digitized forms. A continuous evaluation process will be implemented involving progress reports, dead lines and meetings in between different operations of all phases.
- Inventory of Existing and Planned projects
- Validation of Political Boundaries
- Assessment of Land Use Patterns A suitable classification scheme will be used in defining each land use category. The level of resultant maps will be closely related to the classification scheme which should take into account the final map scale.
- Producing An Atlas of Palestine By making use of GIS and remote sensing technology, ARIJ produced an Atlas of Palestine. This Atlas gives a comprehensive view and include logistic analysis for the historical, political, demographic, socioeconomic, natural resource, climate, soil and geology, land use, and tourism situation for the Palestinian Territories.
Measurement Methods / Tools Generated or Used :
- Several maps were collected and purchased (cadastral maps, British, Israeli, and Jordanian topographic maps, soil maps, and climate maps), digitized, updated and modified to fit with the current political situation. All necessary data was obtained from ARIJ databases and other sources such as published books, atlases, journals, newsletters, the Internet, published maps, maps from the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian municipalities as well as personal contacts.
- For the socio-economic section of the project, the project staff relied completely on 1997 census data published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
- Climatic data including rainfall, temperature, humidity, solar radiation, etc, were collected from numerous meteorological stations and rain gauges that were distributed in various schools and public institutions within the West Bank.
- The classification of green coverage from Landsat images was mainly dependent on field surveys and the actual ground investigation made by taking many geo-referencing points and using the digital camera to take documentary photos. This method of investigation allowed the researchers to measure the wavelengths, reflected from certain cultivated or wild species of flora by measuring their areas in the West Bank, and by using a remote sensing technique called supervised classification.
- Ortho and DEM Generation Module of PCI software were used to build a Topographical (DEM) Model of The West Bank from SPOT Stereo images with a resolution of 10-m contour intervals. addition, by processing the digitized contour lines of 1942 British mandate maps, (scale 1:20,000), on ARC/INFO, a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) was created for both the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a resolution of 25 m contour intervals.
- Changes in vegetation cover and water bodies were detected and calculated from one year to another for the Landsat images by using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) on Erdas imagine V 8.3.
Main Users:
Civil society
Donor agencies
International agencies
Media
Policy makers
Researchers