A methodological approach to sustainable resources utilization in Indonesia: Integrating geographic information systems, mathematical modeling, and expert systems

Achieving sustainability of the world's natural resources has major global environmental implications. Rising world population and radical technological changes have significantly increased human capacity to destroy natural habitat. In Indonesia, forest cover has been reduced at the rate of 700,000 hectares per year between 1981 and 1985 alone (Collins et al., 1992). Current land use practices lead to long-term land degradation, because of the lack of information and operational methodology for land use planning and management.; This dissertation developed an operational method to model and to evaluate the environmental and economic impacts of regional resource development in Indonesia. Specifically, this method integrates a Geographic Information Systems (GIS), mathematical models, and expert system. This integrated method addresses the needs of land use decision making both at the regional and local levels.; A system design for the integration consisting of four major components was developed. This design includes: GIS; mathematical models for ecological, hydrologic, and economic analyses; an expert system; and a user interface system. The GIS was used as the core component providing a database, model development environment, system integration, and visualization capabilities. The mathematical models from the sub-disciplines of landscape ecology, hydrology, and economic geography were used to perform environmental and economic analyses.; A prototype Sustainable LAnd use Manager (SLAM) computer application was constructed implementing the integrated method using land use in the North Bengkulu District, Sumatra, Indonesia as the test case. The prototype application utilized Arc/Info{dollar}spcircler{dollar} GIS software and CLIPS expert system development tools. Three landscape structure indices, including diversity, entropy, and contagion, were developed to measure vegetation diversity and clumping. A spatially distributed event-based hydrologic model was also developed to model overland flow and erosion potential to predict the impact of land use change on soil erosion. Two economic models, including area of influence and accessibility, were implemented to predict the potential influence of natural resource development to the population. An expert system was then developed to perform an integrated and comprehensive evaluation. The expert system interprets the results of the mathematical modeling to provide land use summary and recommendation.