Evaluation of built-up land incompatibility with land capability and its implications for critical land in the Serang Watershed

¹ Graduate Program on Coastal and Watershed Planning and Management, Master of Geography, Faculty of Geography, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia
² Doctoral Program of Environmental Science, Graduate School, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta, Indonesia
³ Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta, Indonesia
⁴ Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: cynthiapermata@staff.uns.ac.id

Abstract

The increase in population encourages land conversion from non- built-up land to built-up land. These conditions often do not consider the land's capability, resulting in an increase in land degradation. The Serang Watershed is one of 108 priority watersheds in Indonesia that require restoration, and is in a state of significant increase in land degradation due to rapid land conversion. Also, Climate change is one of the challenges that can contribute to the decline in watershed function and services. This study aims to analyze the impact of built-up land growth on critical land through land capability mapping. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was used to produce a land capability map, followed by a tiered overlay analysis with built-up land data from sentinel 2A image extraction and critical land data in 2022. The result was that 2,866.72 hectares of land that had exceeded its capability limit was still not classified as critical land, while another 6,113.03 hectares was only categorized as moderately critical despite having exceeded its capability limit. These findings highlight the importance of regularly updating critical land data to support sustainable watershed management and policy making.