A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Civil Engineering

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1998

The comprehensive assessment of resources degradation and socioeconomic conditions in a watershed is the essential factors for plarming and management of watershed. Soil erosion and land cover change are mainly considered as the resources degradation in this study. Soil erosion is an ecological and a socioeconomic problem that adversely affect the agricultural productivity and ecological balance. It can be classified as on-farm and off- farm erosion. The off- farm erosion is mainly related to the destruction of forests and grass lands for the purpose of agricultural land expansion, livestock grazing, fodder and timber collection. Multiple linear regression is an appropriate method for the analysis of resources degradation and socioeconomic conditions. The analysis shows that these factors are linearly correlated to each other. For example, if population increases, soil loss increases and forest cover decreases with time. There are numerous policies recommended in literature to reduce the soil loss, such as afforestation, agroforestry, multiple cropping, farm development, livestock development, monitoring the program, agricultural support services, regional and land use planning, etc. Among them, afforestation, and multiple cropping can be quantified for their contribution in reducing the soil loss. From this study, the afforestation program is proposed for reducing the further degradation of soil loss and policy as well to maintain its level at the same rate using the linear programming. The combination of multiple cropping and afforestation can also be proposed to achieve the same goal.