LADA Land Use Classes

In the context of the Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA) project, the land use system approach for land degradation assessment has as guiding principle that land use is the major driving force of land degradation. Mapping of land
use systems has therefore becomes a major activity within the LADA project at global and national level where land use units are considered the basic units in which land degradation and land improvements are mapped. The following spatial layers were found to be reliable enough and at an acceptable level of detail to be used in the production of the LUS map for South Africa:
• National Land Cover 2000 (NLC Consortium);
• Protected Areas in South Africa 2001 (Biodiversity GIS, South African Biodiversity Institute- SANBI);
• VEGMAP 2006 (Mucina & Rutherford, SANBI);
• Local Municipalities 2005 (Demarcation Board of South Africa).
The LADA Land Use Map for South Africa has 18 land use/cover classes as a result of combining the 4 spatial layers discussed above. In combination with administrative boundaries a total number of 2447 unique combinations (which were equal to the number of LADA-WOCAT Mapping Questionnaires (QM) to be completed) were derived by integrating the Local Municipality (LM) boundaries with the Land Use Systems data.