An analysis of land use dynamics and its determinant factors in West Bengal, India

Abstract

Land and water these two natural resources are the important for any development activity. So, its proper utilization is the serious matter of concern there for to understand the present land use pattern and its changes is critical for future generations. West Bengal is a heartland state in eastern India, with only 2.70 per cent of India total land area which supports 7.55 per cent of human in India. This paper attempts to analyse land use dynamics in West Bengal, the study was mostly based on the secondary data on land use pattern for nine fold classification were collected for the period from 2000-01 to 2010-11 for all the districts of West Bengal. The present study finds that the highly decline trends has been observed in forest and net sown area, on the other hand non-agricultural and current fallow land have shown increasing trends are likely to have serious implication of land use. Similarly, the factor analysis result shows that population and road length growth rate are also associated with non-agricultural land use changes.