Drivers of agricultural land-use change in Kashmir valley - an application of mixed method approach

Agricultural land use change is a major component of global environmental change that concerns food security and the environment. Identification and remediation of these complex processes need methodological diversity to understand human-environmental interactions. The study area has been a prominent hotspot for farmscape alterations recently, thus the present study explores the drivers of agricultural land use change in Kashmir valley. Confidence level analysis was used to compare the results of both the quantitative and qualitative methods. Mixed method approach involving in-depth interviews with experts, questionnaire based on a 5-point Likert scale, literature survey was used to conduct a validation and reliability test on the list of drivers. A multi-nominal regression model was employed as well to emphasise the significance of geo-located or spatialized field evidence. The findings were then compared to data from the literature on agricultural land use changes in the study area. According to confidence analysis, the majority vote is inclined toward drivers like extreme weather events, population growth, land holding size, economic viability of crops, improved irrigation, road connectivity, farm experience and so on. The study concluded that the mixed method approach improves the selection quality of agricultural land use change for modelling and provides suitable management strategies for land use planning.