Agricultural land-use changes pose challenges for land managers in terms of ensuring the implementation of local land-use plans. This paper aims to build a land-use change model named MEKOLUC (Mekong Delta land-use change) for simulating land-use changes under the impacts of socioeconomic factors (profitability of land-use types, societal impacts on neighborhoods) and environmental factors (soil, salinity, persistence of salinity). The salinity diffusion map was generated using GAMA software and employed Markov cellular automata to depict the spread of salinity under the influence of dike and sluice gate system operations. The land-use decision-making process was based on multi-criteria selection of the main factors, which were land suitability, land convertibility, density of land use in the neighborhood and profitability of land-use patterns. The input data for the case study were historical land-use maps from 2005, 2010 and 2015 of Soc Trang, a coastal province in the Mekong Delta. The model was calibrated using a land-use map from 2010 (with kappa = 0.86) and was verified with land-use maps from 2015 and 2020 with deviations from 0 to 19%. The simulated results showed that shrimp–rice farming areas have been shrinking, even though these are recommended as sustainable farming systems. Inversely, intensive rice crops tended to change to rice–vegetable crops, vegetable crops or perennial fruit trees, which are projected to be well adapted to climate and salinity intrusion by 2030. This case study shows that the developed model is an essential tool for helping land managers and farmers build land-use plans.

Under the effects of saltwater intrusion from rising sea water levels, climate change, and socioeconomic issues, the Nga Nam district in Vietnam has suffered damage to its agriculture and changes in agricultural land use. This study aimed to investigate the factors that influenced land use changes and to propose approaches to limit the changes in agricultural land use. The damage caused by saltwater intrusion on agricultural production was evaluated via the use of secondary data collected from the Department of Infrastructure Economics of the Nga Nam district in the period of 2010–2021. The results show that during the 2010–2015 period, agricultural production areas were affected in 2010, 2012, and 2015. In the period of 2015–2021, the trend of saltwater intrusion along the damaged area remarkably decreased due to the work of saltwater-preventing structures. In this period, the area of annual plants increased, while that of fruit trees decreased. In the area comprising annual plants, the area using the triple rice land use type converted into an area using the double rice and double rice–fish ones. Lands for fruit trees transitioned from mixed farming to specialized farming to raise the economic efficiency for farmers. These changes were affected by four main factors: the physical factor, the economy, society, and the environment. The environmental and economic factors were seen to play the most important role as drivers of changes in land use. The factors of saltwater intrusion and acid-sulfate-contaminated soil, consumer markets, floods, drought, profit, and investments were noted to be significant drivers in agricultural land use change. Thus, both structural and non-structural approaches are suggested to inhibit the safeguard changes in the future.

Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region contains a sizable amount of acid-sulfate soil, which has properties that harm plants, such as low pH, aluminum and iron toxicity, hydrogen sulfide and sulfate acid. The study aims to gather helpful information about the problems with acid sulfate soils’ chemical makeup so that suggestions can be made for improving these soils in the Mekong Delta. These methods mainly review studies and projects on the properties, constraints and management improvement of acid-sulfate soils and recommend the proper methods for sustainable use. The Mekong Delta contains many sulfidic or acid-sulfate-producing materials. Soils that contain acid sulfate are especially vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. Therefore, evaluating and predicting how acidic soil impacts soil quality and the affected factors such as drought, water scarcity, rainstorms, floods and saltwater intrusion are essential. Selecting cultivars that can withstand acid sulfate or salt is easy and inexpensive. Designing appropriate farming models is necessary in the interim. To correctly manage and exploit acid sulfate soils in the current situation, one must also be aware of their distribution, physicochemical makeup and biological properties.

Land-use planning plays an important role in agricultural development. However, the tools used to support planners in proposing land-use planning solutions are lacking, especially when considering saltwater intrusion conditions in coastal regions. In this study, optimization is applied by analyzing land use in developing solutions for agricultural land-use planning, wherein a multi-objective optimization model is developed to optimize land-use area, including land-use allocation, and taking into account socioeconomic and environmental factors. The model was applied to three districts of Soc Trang province, Vietnam (Long Phu, My Xuyen, and Tran De), representing three ecological regions of salt water, brackish water, and fresh water in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The results are shown for the implementation of two multi-objective optimization scenarios (in terms of profit, labor, environment benefits, and risk reduction) as follows: (i) multi-objective optimization of agricultural land use until 2030 under normal conditions; (ii) optimizing agricultural land use until 2030 under climate change conditions similar to the 2016 drought and saltwater intrusion phenomenon in the Mekong Delta. The results demonstrate that the second scenario is the preferred option for implementing land-use planning thanks to the balance between good profits and minimizing economic and environmental risk. Land allocation was carried out by taking into account the factors of household economics, the influence of adjacent production types, local traffic, and canal systems to allocate areas toward ensuring optimal land use. This process, involving a combination of land-use optimization and spatial allocation, can help planners to improve the quality of agricultural land-use planning.

The study aimed to evaluate the soil environment characteristics of Vinh Long Province's perennial crop-growing area using cluster analysis (CA) and principal component analysis (PCA). Soil environmental quality data were collected in eight districts of Vinh Long province for 27 physical and...

Nghiên cứu thực hiện nhằm tìm hiểu các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến sự thay đổi sử dụng đất nông nghiệp của huyện Phong Điền làm cơ sở đề xuất các giải pháp nâng cao hiệu quả sử dụng đất. Các số liệu về thực trạng sử dụng đất trong giai đoạn 2016-2021 được thu thập nhằm đánh giá sự thay đổi của chúng. Bên cạnh đó, hai cuộc đánh giá nhanh nông thôn được tổ chức để xác định các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến sự thay đổi sử dụng đất nông nghiệp. Sau đó, 21 chuyên gia được tham vấn để xác định mức độ tác động của các yếu tố bởi phương pháp đánh giá đa tiêu chí. Kết quả cho thấy quá trình canh tác nông nghiệp của huyện bị ảnh hưởng nhiều bởi yếu tố thị trường tiêu thụ, giá bán, chi phí đầu vào và thời tiết. Qua đó, các giải pháp về công trình và phi công trình được đề xuất. Trong đó, các giải pháp về liên kết sản xuất, quản lý vật tư nông nghiệp và phát triển chế biến, bảo quản sau thu hoạch được chú trọng thực hiện.