What it is?
A village is the smallest entity of human settlement after a hamlet. Its population maybe up to 2000 persons and the size of household (family) can vary depending on the cultural practices. Generally, in a village, it is observed that the human settlement houses are located in form of a cluster (in some cases, it can be scattered also) and it occupies a certain part of overall village boundary. A village boundary encompasses land parcels – agricultural fields, vacant unused lands, water bodies, roads/railway lines, canal alignments, electrical transmission lines, government gochar land (grass fields) and kharaba (waste lands) or in some cases, industries. The composition of land parcels within a village boundary is known as Village land use. It needs to be in form of a map, which helps better visualisation of variation in the village.
Why it is required? How it can be useful?
A village land use map, if available, it can help in the following manner.
- To identify the predominant activity in the village;
- To locate potential area for planning certain activities;
- To demote inappropriate activities through permission by an authority;
- To interpret proposed activities and its suitability;
- It acts as a base map for any village level development plan preparation and so on.
- Pattern of existing development can be revealed; with information on past records, a trend of spatial extension can be known;
How to prepare a land use map of a village?
- Get a village map in soft copy/print version on some scale (from Village Talati / District Land Records office);
- Get the map converted on a known scale so that areas of each land parcel can be worked out;
- Fetch the information about each of the land parcel (Block number) in a village using 7/12 form. Click the link (https://anyror.gujarat.gov.in/Info712Page.aspx) select the district, taluka, village and survey number.
- Check the information of plot use by verifying on Google maps or Bhuvan or best mode of verification is site visit – “Ground truthing”.
- Check the type of use mentioned and use appropriate colour code for specific land use;
- Paste the colour in your map;
- Prepare the area information for each type of land use simultaneously while getting the land use details from 7/12 form; (spreadsheet column titles may be as: Sr. No. – Block No. – Area in Sq. Mt. – Area in Ha. – use of Land – Ownership status [private/Government])
- Once done both of above tasks for each and every land parcel in a village, sum up each type of land use and check for entire village area and your summed up area; make necessary corrections as required to match both areas;
- Now, totals from different type of land use area are available, convert it to percentage and formulate it in a table form; paste the table on the map;
- The land use map is ready!
Do not forget to mention the date when it has been prepared so that a user may update it appropriately prior using it.
Go, prepare one for yourself, it is very interesting exercise and we, in India, have a lot of villages around, having NO LAND-USE MAP at all…!
(Above example of map preparation credit goes to my beloved students of B. E. Civil (2017 Batch) – ABHISHEK KHER (130420106001), RUSHIN PATEL (130420106042), ZANKHIL PATEL (130420106044), and HARDIK JADAV (140423106004) who enjoyed the exercise while working for Vishwakarma Yojana Phase – IV.
VYP-V: Create a Land use map of a village by Bhasker Vijaykumar Bhatt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.