Aim
This course is designed to enable students to characterize land and water and their qualities, evaluate land in terms of economic productivity and be able to apply Land evaluation techniques, use and interpret soil and land capability maps.
Objectives
Upon completion of the course, the students should be able to:
1) Characterize land and its qualities, classify land for its suitability for various uses
2) Understand and apply the principles of land evaluation.
3) Perform practical land evaluation on identified farming block, urban settlement, industrial park, or economic zones.
Course Outline
1. Introduction
2. Land Evaluation Methods
3. The FAO Land Evaluation Procedure
4. The Land suitability and capability classification systems
5. Land Improvement
Contact hours
3 hours lectures per week
3 hours practical session per week
Assessment
Continuous Assessment 50%
2 Tests 20%
2 Assignments/essay 20%
Labs/practicals/tours 10%
Final Examination 50%
Prescribed text
1) FAO. 1976. A framework for land evaluation. FAO Soils Bulletin 32.
Recommended text
2) FAO. 2007. Land Evaluation: towards a revised framework. Land and Water Discussion Paper 6.
3) FAO. 1985. Guidelines: Land Evaluation for Irrigated Agriculture. FAO Soils Bulletin 55.
4) Rossiter, D.G. 1994. Lecture Notes: “Land Evaluation”. Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Department of Soil, Crop and Atmospheric Sciences.
E/CN.17/1995/7. February 1997, United nations, New york.
5) van Diepen, C.A., van Keulen, H., Wolf, J. and Berkhout, J.A.A. 1991. Land Evaluation-from intuition to quantification. In: Advances in Soil Science. Stewart, B.A. (ed). New York Springer. P 139-204.