Land & Water

Land Resources Planning Toolbox

This category of tools gives prominence to biophysical attributes (climate, soil, terrain, water, etc.) and their interactions in the land evaluation process. The output, in most cases, guides the users to suitable options for land use alternatives, based mainly on biophysical attributes. Land suitability and similarity analysis are typical examples. Documents describing principles, approaches and guidelines for land evaluation are included, as well as different tools for classifying soils based on the suitability for a specific use, capability or potential, fertility constraints and management and linkages to yield, productivity, physical and chemical properties. Sophisticated or simplified modelling of crop growth and yield predictions, also fall into this category.

The tools in this category use as inputs information on both biophysical characteristics  and social and economic conditions and generally incorporate principles, approaches and methods of participatory land use planning, with the overall objective of reaching mutually beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders.

The tools in this category give prominence to the characterization of social and economic settings required for land use planning and includes approaches and methods of participatory decision-making. Biophysical conditions may be considered in these tools, but not in depth.

This category includes databases that can facilitate land evaluation and land use planning by providing information that may serve as inputs for the process. These databases provide maps and data on soil and terrain characteristics, land degradation, land cover, land use, climatic data including future projections, crops and yields, food, agriculture, water resources, adaptability/suitability of identified plant species for a given environment, and socio-economic data and statistics on poverty, population, tenure and gender.

This category of tools do not produce results that have direct use for land evaluation and land use planning, but has a supporting role by providing various types of data  that can be used in land evaluation studies and as input data sets for land use planning.

Number of records: 171
Type: Educational materials,Framework/Guidelines,Maps/GIS
Scale: National, Sub-national/Province/District
Thematic areas: Forestry - statistics, Land evaluation, Land management/planning, Land use/cover
User Category: Technical specialist
The Panchayati Raj  is a system of local self-government in India, introduced by an amendment to the Constitution in 1992, with the goal to...
Type: Educational materials,Framework/Guidelines
Scale: Locality/Farm/Site, Watershed/Basin/Landscape
Thematic areas: Social - participatory approaches
User Category: Facilitator, Stakeholder
The erosion model of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) is a continuous simulation computer program which predicts soil loss...
Type: Model
Scale: Locality/Farm/Site
Thematic areas: Soils - management and conservation
User Category: Technical specialist, Modeller
Type: Educational materials,Maps/GIS
Scale: National, Sub-national/Province/District, Watershed/Basin/Landscape
Thematic areas: Land evaluation
User Category: Technical specialist
SISLAC (“Sistema de Informacion de Suelos de Latinoamerica”) is a regional initiative promoted and sponsored by the Global Soil Partnership, which involves CIAT, EMBRAPA and 20 national institutes in Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile,...
Type: Data
Scale: Regional, National
Thematic areas: Soils - distribution and properties
User Category: Technical specialist
SDBm Plus  is a software package designed to harmonize, store and use large amounts of geo-referenced soil profile data, elaborated in the field and the laboratory, in an efficient and systematic way. The soil profile database can be...
Type: Data
Scale: Global, Regional, National, Sub-national/Province/District, Watershed/Basin/Landscape
Thematic areas: Soils - distribution and properties
User Category: Technical specialist
This tool provides a holistic approach for the Near East to implement a participatory land and water use planning process that integrates land, water, tenure and gender together.  This region has the lowest per-capita water availability in...
Type: Educational materials,Framework/Guidelines
Scale: National, Sub-national/Province/District
Thematic areas: Land management/planning, Social - participatory approaches
User Category: Policy maker, Facilitator, Stakeholder
The Land Use Dynamics Simulator (LUDAS) is a spatially-explicit, integrated biophysical-socio-economic modelling approach that aims to predict the longer-term impacts of land use/cover changes under different management/planning/policy scenarios. It has been described by
Type: Model
Scale: Sub-national/Province/District, Watershed/Basin/Landscape
Thematic areas: Land management/planning, Land use/cover
User Category: Technical specialist, Scientific advisor, Modeller, Policy maker
The Land Use and Coverage Area frame Survey (LUCAS) is an extensive and regular topsoil survey that is carried out across the European Union to derive policy‐relevant statistics on the effect of land management on soil characteristics. Approximately 45...
Type: Data,Maps/GIS
Scale: Sub-national/Province/District, Watershed/Basin/Landscape
Thematic areas: Soils - distribution and properties
User Category: Technical specialist, Scientific advisor, Modeller
LRIMS is a GIS-based system to manage land resource information in Libya, developed by the project “Mapping of Natural Resources for Agriculture Use and Planning in Libya” (LIB/00/004), initiated by the Libyan Government in collaboration with UNDP and FAO.
Type: Maps/GIS
Scale: National
Thematic areas: Land evaluation
User Category: Technical specialist, Scientific advisor