ABSTRACT
During the last 20 years, development planners in Nepal have used terrain evaluation and land-capability mapping in order to define the optimum use of land. This has involved taking into account environmental constraints such as impoverished or poorly drained soil, and susceptibility of land to flooding and erosion. Such planning can be done on the basis of slow and thorough large-scale field mapping, as has been traditionally carried out in the developed world. But in Third World countries, it is more common to use remote sensing techniques – particularly based on vertical air photographs – for collecting information. Parts of Nepal have been investigated in this way by the Overseas Development Administration of the British Government, but during the mid-1980’s an inventory of virtually the whole of Nepal has been produced, in three series of maps at a scale of 1:50,000. The work was carried out by Renting Earth Sciences of Canada, supported by the Canadian Government.
