The Agroforestry Potencies in the Reduction of Erosion Rate and the Improvement of Community Income as Land Conservation Effort in Tarumajaya Village, Kecamatan Kertasari, Bandung Regency

• Main Author: Vidia Elok Hapsari, Sisilia
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/40230
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Deforestation is one of land use change types that is significantly happening in Indonesia, which causes critical conditions in watersheds. Among 108 categorized critical watersheds, 15 of them have been stated as priorities to be handled immediately, one of them is Citarum Watersheds especially in its upstream area. Various programs are arranged to stop the land use change problem. The worsening of Citarum River quality and its rising erosion rate annually have led to abundant of unmanageable ecological impacts. On the other side, the pressure of higher income and domestic economic need has also become a dilemma for the society who actually aspire to restore the sustainability of the Citarum River. One of the agricultural cultivation programs that are believed to be able to integrate the economic and ecological needs is agroforestry. Agroforestry is a combination system of vegetables, coffee plants, and forest plants which has the potential to reduce the erosion rates and increase the community income. In order to identify the erosion rate, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) method is used. Afterward, the Net Farm income calculation method is used to identify the increase of community economic income. The author conducted this research in Tarumajaya Village, Kertasari District, Bandung Regency which is considered as the 0 km point location of Citarum River and had applied the concept of agroforestry. From the research result, it is approved that agroforestry has the potential to reduce the average level of erosion hazard and also improve the community income at the time when the coffee plants are ready to be harvested. Therefore, with these potentials, agroforestry could become one of the agricultural cultivation types for the land conservation effort as i mportant information in the planning process until its implementation for maintaining the agroforestry potential .