Table of Contents

Abstract: Some authorities argue that land is the most fundamental of natural resources. If their arguments fail to convince, we certainly have to cede that land is a limited natural resource. Aside from a few thousand Moken living on the Andaman Sea, humans are tied to the land. Most of us live, eat and sleep on land, even oil rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico, Filipino merchant seamen, Japanese fishermen and British naval ratings divide their lives between sea and land. As the world’s population has grown we have not, with the exception of the industrious Dutch, created land at the expense of the sea. The 29% of the world’s surface that is land, has for many millennia been vitally important in terms of how societies have evolved. Land resources have fed and clothed us, enabled us to build things, and spawned conflicts. [...]

Abstract: In order to address the challenges in coastal regions, there is the need to understand the extent and impacts of past changes and their implications for future management. Land use data and remotely-sensed imagery are often used to provide insights into these changes. Often, however, existing land use data are inconsistent, thus differences observed through their analyses could also be attributable to error. The use of multiple layers of data, in addition and as related to basic land use layers, has been suggested in the literature as a method to mitigate such error. This study used existing land use data, population, stream flow, climate and water quality data with a view to determining what information could be discerned from multi-layer analyses and whether or how it could be used in watershed-level management decision making. Results showed that all the datasets provided useful, but not necessarily complemental, insights into spatial and temporal changes occurring in the watershed. The information obtained did, however, provide a broader perspective on watershed dynamics, which would be useful for watershed-level decision making. Overall, the multi-layer approach was found suitable in the absence of consistent land use data, provided results were interpreted in context, considering the historical perspective and with a working knowledge of the watershed.