The Governments of the MRC Member Countries realized the importance the impacts of agriculture to water sectors, therefore, the activity on agricultural land use monitoring initiated in the previous MRC Strategic Plan 2011-2015 to analysis driving forces and impacts of agricultural land use changes to the local livelihoods and to provide recommendations to relevant stakeholder at different levels. Later, the pilot study on agricultural land use monitoring in the selected areas in each country was implemented under the current MRC Strategic Plan 2016-2020 under Activity 1.7.1 managed by the Agriculture and Irrigation sector of Planning Division, MRCS.

The objectives of this pilot study are to;
• Rreview and improve MRC land use/land cover (LULC) maps of 2003 and 2010;
• Produce agricultural land use maps in the selected pilot areas of the most updated year in each member country;
• Detect LULC changes, focusing on agricultural land use;
• Analyze driving forces of major agricultural land use changes and impacts of land use changes to local people’s livelihood for the selected case studies; and
• Highlight significant land use changes, their implications and provide recommendations on agricultural land use management at different levels. In this pilot study, MRC has involved the national experts from the national line agencies for implementing the activity in the selected pilot area in member country. The national implementing agencies includes the General Directorate of Agriculture (Cambodia), the Forest Inventory and Planning Division (Lao PDR), the Land Development Department (Thailand), and the Sub-National Institute of Agricultural Planning and Projection (Vietnam).

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