National Land Agency BPN - Republic of Indonesia (1995):
International Workshop on the Implementation of Rural Land Consolidation

9.1.1 Background

Human demand for living and location of cultivating was previously easy to reach. However, year by year, since the growth of population and beside that land area is fixed, there is a persistent raise of environmental problems, such as physical socio-economical, culture or defense and security which set up land use conflict.

Some community which are forced to reach their living needs, encroach forest. In addition, the increase of marginal land combined with topographic situation, land structure and distance between reaches of river is relatively short, so that slope river bed is very steep and frequency of run off is relatively high. On rainy season, especially above normal level, it will impact on stream bank erosion and sheet erosion as depicted in pictures 1,2,3. Besides, condition of land texture group is fine which ash particle percentage is high, resulted in mud on heavy rain. Run off in the catchment area leads to the mouth of river in to Lake Limboto is so high that sedimentation process in the lake is very fast.

High sedimentation combined with low rainfall resulted in less water inflow into the lake and land use in conflict with its capability leads to the environment diminishing in an extraordinary pace. The Lake Limboto was narrowing from 8,000 hectares and 14 meters depth in 1932 became 3,000 hectares and 2.50 meters depth in 1993 (pictures 4,5). The pace of shallowing was 40.60 centimeters per year and confining 56 to 69 hectares per year.