Potential Land for Development in Bhutan

Bhutan has consistently ranked in the bottom 30% of global economic rankings by the United Nations. With radically high environmental standards--unheard of on a global scale--as well as delayed modernization, economic advancement in Bhutan has just recently emerged as a priority for the country. However, environmental protection and conservation are often viewed in direct conflict with economic growth and advancement. This begs the question, how can Bhutan keep their valued environmental promises made in their constitution while achieving sustainable economic growth and advancement?

In order to address this central question, our group of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysts worked to categorize and prioritize land in Bhutan in search of best potential land for future development. With Bhutan's environmental standards in mind, our team developed the following criteria for determining potential land for development (PLD):

1. Land will not be within a five kilometer (5km) buffer of protected areas and biological corridors.
2. Land will be within a three kilometer (3 km) buffer of existing developed areas 
3. Land will be connected with established roads

In focusing on these three criteria, our central question addresses two of the four main pillars of Gross National happiness: sustainable and equitable socio-economic development as well as conservation of environment.

Constitutional environmental agreements of Bhutan include maintaining 60% forest cover, conserving biodiversity, and staying carbon neutral while also pursuing economic growth and advancement. In order to keep these promises, we have mapped the protected areas and biological corridors of Bhutan.

Our team was then able to focus on ten areas which did not fall within the excluded lands. Adding and merging a 5km buffer around these areas, we created an "Excluded Lands" layer, within which future land development should not take place. Analyzing these ten areas was the first step in discovering potential land for development (PLD) in Bhutan.

Within these ten PLDs, we added the 2016 Land Use Layer from the Forestry Department of Bhutan to get a better idea of where development should take place. By compiling the data within this layer, we created five subsections of land use including:

• Agriculture
• Forest
• Built
• Non-Built: comprised of non-built, shrubs, alpine, and meadow sub layers
• Not Suitable for Development: comprised of rocky outcrop, snow, and moraine sub layers

We determined more thorough criteria based on the information in this "Land Use" layer and our categorization of land use. Our group chose to eliminate four of the ten PLDs based on their land use. Two PLDs were discarded due to containing non-built or unsuitable land use. The other two PLDs were discarded based on size and non-built land use. We chose to prioritize larger regions that were already built up in order to preserve and put forth development hotspots that would sustain growth.

The six PLDs were then cut down to five, as one was not connected via roads to the other PLD centers. Also, to maintain connectivity, we removed additional buffered regions within PLDs that were not connected by roads.

The remaining five PLDs we chose to focus on fell within the following categories (1) areas that are currently developed on (2) and have connectivity to other areas with roads. Our group then established a 3 km buffer around all built areas in the six PLDs and merged them to indicate more specific regions for growth. This buffer was based on the current size of Thimphu, the capital city, which is 26 km^2. The area of each buffer circle is 30km. Through this, we shrank the five PLDs to be within a 3 km buffer from previously built up areas.

Our team then turned to the spatial data of cities and towns in Bhutan in order to determine the specific cities where further development should potentially be focused.

The following 26 populated regions fell into our final PLDs:

Cities: 1) Thimphu, 2) Wangdi Phodrang, and 3) Paro.

Hamlets: 1)Phongmey, 2) Chimithagkha, 3) Narphu, 4) Pajo, 5) Sopskha, and 6)Teoprongchu

Populated Places: 1) Paro Dzong, 2) Getta Dzong, 3) Netap, 4) Byakar Dzong, 5) Gong Thung, 6) Thebong , 7) Sarbhang, and 8) Nepaltargaon

Villages: 1) Zugne, 2) Domkhar, 3) Sarpang, 4) Gedu, 5) Jazhipang, 6) Gomtu, 7) Lobesa - Metsina, and 8) Walakha

Additionally, we wanted to include a history of natural disasters in Bhutan. Due to the country's location along the Himalayan mountains, our team chose to focus this part of our analysis specifically on earthquakes. Earthquakes, which can be devastating to a city's infrastructure, should be considered when determining where to develop major cities. While Bhutan has had only relatively low magnitude earthquakes in its recent past, researchers and geophysicists have determined the entire region of the Himalayas to be prone to major (magnitude 7-7.9) earthquakes (cite Tiny Himalayan ). 

In our analysis, we focused on earthquakes that occurred throughout the country over the span of the last 19 years (2000-2019). Data was imported from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to map earthquakes ranging from a level 3 magnitude through a level 6 magnitude.

While we included earthquakes as a layer in our map, ultimately we chose not to buffer around these sites for three reasons: (1) earthquakes in Bhutan have occurred at a relatively low frequency over the past 19 years (2) most earthquakes that did occur were at a low magnitude (3-4) and (3) most earthquake sites occurred near where current roads and towns are already in place. Ultimately, our team decided to include earthquakes in the final map in an effort to educate potential decision-makers on potential natural disaster zones and encourage the use of building materials that can sustain such disasters.

The overarching goal of this project was to help inform decision-making for future development in Bhutan. In developing a list of criteria, we attempted to highlight the best potential areas for future land development. Our hope is to share the maps we developed with decision-makers in Bhutan so the country can continue to develop while still maintaining a pristine environment and positive relationship with the land.

While maintaining environmental standards of Bhutan, sustainable building materials that are earthquake safe are recommended due to earthquake data shown.

Ask: How can Bhutan keep environmental promises made in their constitution while achieving sustainable economic growth and advancement?

Acquire: Our team got our data from our professor Karen Beardsley who obtained the data directly from the Forest Department and the National Land Commission of Bhutan. Additionally, we gathered and imported earthquake data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) online.

Examine: Next, we imported and examined all data layers. Data was grouped and sub grouped in order to better visualizes important aspects. Unnecessary data layers were then removed to unclutter our final map.

Analyze: Analysis tools, such as merge, union, clip, and intersect, were utilized to narrow down our data range to only focus within our PLD. This also helped to remove unnecessary data.

Act: We hope that our findings can be of use to policy makers of Bhutan to take into consideration when planning future development. Development in these suggested towns would help to preserve environmental standards and sustain efficient economic growth. Earthquake findings presented in our map should also be taken into consideration when assessing building materials.

Challenges: Our team faced many challenges when analyzing and completing our project. First, data collection was extensive, with hundreds of thousands of entries to weed through. We experienced a lot of trial and error when attempting to use analysis tools and filter through unnecessary data. Additionally, we found it difficult to visualize the land use data, which was relatively small, in our large PLDs. Our dynamic map helps make it easier for readers to explore the small data points. When trying to upload our final data layers into ArcGIS online, we struggled with projecting all layers into WGS 1984 and then into web layers so they could be uploaded. Special thanks to our teachers assistant Oliver Sandoval for helping us figure that one out.

Source of Coffee: Tim Crowell!

Images: James Morgan - "Bhutan Rising: Democracy from Scratch" Website

Data:

• United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

• Bhutan Forest Department
• Bhutan National Land Commission
• USGS Online

Ellen Sanders-Raigosa, Julia Finney, and Lily Keene are recent graduates of University of California, Davis (class of 2019, 2019, and 2020 respectively). This project was a result a Special Summer Session study abroad course based in Thimphu, Bhutan. The session was run by UC Davis and hosted at the Royal Thimphu College, from August 2019 - September 2019. The culmination of our work represented our final group project for the Introduction to Geographic Information Systems (LDA150) course while in Bhutan. We would like to thank our professor, Karen Beardsley, and our on site coordinator, Bob, for our memorable learning experience.

Contact Information:

Ellen Sanders-Raigosa - esandersraigosa@ucdavis.edu

Julia Finney - jafinney@ucdavis.edu

Lily Keene - lmkeene@ucdavis.edu