Under the arrangement of Sino-Nepal Joint Research Center for Geography Project and South Asian Project, Dr. TANG Wei, ZHANG Jifei and SU Yi from Institute Of Mountain Hazards And Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMHE, CAS) conducted a nine-day questionnaire survey and filed visits about settlement environment and farmers’ livelihoods in mountainous area of Central Development Region in Nepal from Oct.30 to Nov.9, 2014. This trip received great help from the Department of Geography of Tribhuvan University of Nepal.

Selection and allocation of survey sites (by IMHE)

In this survey, Melamchi village, Dubachaurvillage, Ichokvillage and Helambuvillage, which belong to Melamchi River Basin was selected as the typical sample villages, and a total of 210 questionnaires were collected. Questionnaire includes basic information of the households, land use, family income, household expenditure, assets, living condition, and so on. Results showed that, different types of the households have different livelihood strategies, combination and income, so introducing and expanding non-agricultural activities is the development trend for local livelihoods strategies.

The surveyalso finds out that with altitude increasing, the settlement environment and the livelihoods of farmers showed a greater difference. And respecting to the high mountain region, settlements in valley region have a relative good environment and more diverse livelihoods. In addition,adverse natural environment, social and economic conditions as well as farmers own quality is combined effects on the sustainable development of the livelihoods and land use.

Through this investigation, the research group preliminary mastered the settlement environmental characteristics and the livelihood strategies of different types of householdsin Nepal mountains, which provides the basis data for exploring the impacts of different settlement environment on households livelihood strategies and the adaptation of the livelihood strategies for settlement environment.