Discuss some reasons which are responsible for changes of land use pattern.
Answers
Land use is obviously constrained by environmental factors such as soil characteristics, climate, topography, and vegetation. But it also reflects the importance of land as a key and finite resource for most human activities including agriculture, industry, forestry, energy production, settlement, recreation, and water catchment and storage. Land is a fundamental factor of production, and through much of the course of human history, it has been tightly coupled to economic growth (Richards 1990). As a result, control over land and its use is often an object of intense human interactions.
Human activities that make use of, and hence change or maintain, attributes of land cover are considered to be the proximate sources of change. They range from the initial conversion of natural forest into cropland to on-going grassland management (e.g., determining the intensity of grazing and fire frequency) (Schimel et al. 1991; Hobbs et al. 1991; Turner 1989).
Such actions arise as a consequence of a very wide range of social objectives, including the need for food, fibre, living space, and recreation; they therefore cannot be understood independent of the underlying drivingforces that motivate and constrain production and consumption. Some of these, such as property rights and the structures of power from the local to the international level, influence access to or control over land resources. Others, such as population density and the level of economic and social development, affect the demands that will be placed on the land, while technology influences the intensity of exploitation that is possible. Still others, such as agricultural pricing policies, shape land-use decisions by creating the incentives that motivate individual decision makers.
Interpretations of how these factors interact to produce different uses of the land in different environmental, historical, and social contexts are controversial in both policymaking and scholarly settings. Furthermore, there are many theories regarding which factors are the most important determinants. Particular controversy arises in assessing the relative importance of the different forces underlying land-use decisions in specific cases (e.g., Kummer 1992). For example, apparent dryland degradation could be the result of: overgrazing by increasingly numerous groups of nomadic cattle herders; an unintended consequence of a "development" intervention such as the drilling of bore holes which increases stress on land close to the wells; or the political clout of groups that, through governmental connections, are able to over-exploit land belonging to the state or local communities (Pearce 1992; NERC 1992). Identifying a particular cause may have implications for the rights of competing user groups or the formulation of policy responses.
It has different reason to responsible for changes of land use pattern with such as increase the population, rising demand for food and other cash crops, increase urbanization with no trouble of it.
On the other hand, it has drying up of water sources and also water pollution with no risk and trouble of it.