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The forest land is one of the vital natural resources of Bangladesh as it contributes largely to balance the ecosystem and the environment as well. Also, the forestry sector accounts for about 3% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 2% of the labour force which indicates that this sector needs special attention. The objective of the study is to delineate the 64 districts of Bangladesh into 7 regions on the basis of the existing condition of forest lands in Bangladesh. To meet this objective formal regionalization has been performed using five important factors such as: amount of reserved forest land, amount of notified under Forest Act 4 & 6, amount of protected forest land, amount of acquired forest land and amount of vested forest land are selected for weighting each district. The required data were collected from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). Equal Class Interval Method is selected for determining class interval and therefore seven classes are formed with seven potential regions. Skewness defines how the data are distributed in the class and value of skewness is the indicator of forming the class range. Composite index method is used to measure the weight of each district and levels of regions are subjected with respect to the value of weight. Not only the amount of dense forest is low but also the amount of total forest land in Bangladesh is very low. The study may help the researchers, urban planners and policy makers to perform further research in forest land conservation and management.

Agriculture is one of the largest producing sectors of economy since it comprises about 14.2% of the country's GDP. Fertilizer is a chemical or natural substance added to soil or land to enhance its fruitfulness and help in increasing production. The aim of the study is to divide all the 64 districts of Bangladesh on the basis intensity of agricultural production and the chemical fertilizer use. Only the cereal crops have been considered as agricultural production. The study will find out if the highly productive areas are depended on chemical fertilizer or not by comparing the both maps produced from the regionalization according to agricultural production and chemical fertilizer use. Rajshahi, Kurigram, Cox’s Bazar, Sylhet, Narshingdi districts have been found as exceptional region where agricultural cereal crops production is not proportional to the amount of chemical fertilizer use which has diversified reasons. In this context, Formal region has been delineated using Composite Index Method for fertilizer use, five factors such as (UREA, TSP, MP, DAP, Others) and for agricultural production such as (Aus, Aman, Boro, Potato, Rape and Mustard) have been considered for regionalization. Data collected from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has been analysed and presented in maps prepared with ArcGIS (version 10.2.2). This study may help the policy makers for further research on increasing the capacity of agricultural food production and maintenance of chemical fertilizer use in future.

Counter-balancing the spatio-functional gaps of service facilities is considered to be the foremost task of Regional Planning. The functional gap analysis and median population threshold helps to identify and analyze the adequacy or inadequacy of the services within each complementary region. Therefore, this particular research tries to understand the requirement and availability of socio-economic facilities and its distribution in the optimum location in the study area through the analysis of functional gap and median population threshold. This study deals with several services facilities as growth center, rural market, educational and healthcare facilities like high school, primary school, upazilla health complex, community clinic and so on. As an overall finding the study reveals that, service facilities like community clinic, growth center requires a very small population to be supported whereas facilities like police station, healthcare center do not demand such a high population to be existed. The main reason behind that can be facility like community clinic is of major importance for the people and it is a basic need in comparing to the other supplementary services like police station. In regards of functional gap, the service facilities are inadequate in almost all of the unions and upazillas of Khulna district. Finally, the study concludes to an interesting finding that, though the secondary needs of the people of this region is not served properly, the basic needs of common people is well served in this region.

Gender responsive planning and budgeting bring together three issues that are: gender equality, inclusive planning and financial management. GRBP argues that gender equality principles should be incorporated into all stages of the planning and budget process. Many countries have accepted gender mainstreaming as a strategy for achieving inclusiveness in all level of government. Planners across the world have increasingly begun to understand the value of inclusive planning. In this context, there has been a growing recognition that gender is a critical category of analysis and must not be overlooked by planners. Bangladesh has made significant progress in gender equality to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), Goal No-5: Gender Equality. But a number of challenges remain in different sectors and women still now face discriminations. The budgetary allocations at the local government level mostly focus on infrastructural issues rather than social issues. A major issue that underpins limited planning at the local level from a gender perspective is little awareness of and sensitization to developmental statistics and issues. The aim of this research is to explore that how the gender issue is addressed in budgeting and planning process at local level and women’s participation in it. This research will also identify strategies and operational approaches to strengthen on-going efforts in the area of GRPB. The long-term goal of the research is to enable key stakeholders at the local level to accelerate their efforts to ensure that women’s priorities are adequately reflected in planning and budgeting processes.

Over the last few decades Bangladesh has already experienced the emergence of recurrent floods, severe cyclones, water logging, salinity intrusions, and riverbank erosion as the climatic push factors that have forced highly exposed and vulnerable coastal communities to migrate especially from the southwestern zone. However, only few ground level efforts have been made so far to scientifically explore and synthesize the general socio-demographic drivers, especially in terms of slow-onset disasters. So, this paper aims to explore various socio-demographic factors that influence migration decision making, and coherent dynamics of migration decision making in the context of both observed and anticipatory risk to the impacts of climate variability. The required primary data was collected through administering semi-structured questionnaire among 120 randomly selected households of Mollarhat and Monglaupazilas of Bagerhat district, from the southwest coastal zone of Bangladesh due to its immense vulnerability to cyclone and salinity intrusion. The findings of the study showed that majority of the respondents are well concerned about climate change and taking various measures to overcome its impacts. Perceived to be having an increasing trend, the study found a significant relationship between the migration trend in the localities and hazard years (e.g. cyclones, low rainfall etc.) and seasons (e.g. excessive rainfall). Although the primary motivation is better income for migrants or intended migrants, in effect, it acted as an effective form of adaptation during times of climatic stress. Seasonal migration was found to be a common trend, where the remittance sent by the migrants played roles as a means of income security when regular employment in their local area was not available due to various climatic stresses. Although most of the seasonal migration occurred to nearby regional destinations, a considerable portion of it was also found to be occurring at distant locations across the country. So, a major part of the migration was found to have occurred during the month of April to July and November to urban, sub-urban and even other villages for job. The study also identified that migration decision making due to climatic and non-climatic factors can often vary in terms of age, sex, occupational, educational, income and various vulnerability features.

Walking is considered as the most comfortable and equitable means of transportation because it is cheap and it needs some basic infrastructure. There is a need for greater understanding of how neighbourhood built environment influencewalking behavior of the young adults. The purpose of the study is to identify the walking related built environment factors and examine the relationship between the built environment and young adult walking in Bangladesh. Data collection was conducted through a household survey on 196 young adult respondents whose age is between 18 to 29 years at Uttara in 2018. Young adult walking data on the numbers, types of trips and daily activities related to walking were obtained through a field survey. Walking and neighbourhood built environment characteristics were measured using rating of the statement on different elements of the built environment on 5-point Likert scales. There were seventeen built environment elements related to walking and these were classified according to six factors through Principal Components Analysis and Rotated Component Matrix. The association between characteristics of the built environment and the walking was assessed through linear regression analysis. The result of the analysis reveals that neighbourhood built environment features related to accessibility, pleasurability, traffic factors and safety were associated with the total amount of walking of young adults. The research concluded that the increase of street and footpath width, promotion of safety measures and development of traffic factors increase the walking ability of the young adult within the neighbourhood.

In response to prevailing classification inconsistency between land cover maps, developed by different organizations in different times at different scales, an object-based National Land Representation System (NLRS) for Bangladesh has been developed. The process, which began in 2013 and was completed in 2016, brought together several national organizations and involved an extensive process of consultation, data collection, translation, and analysis of existing land cover/use classification systems. The process focused on the interpretation of three legends from historic national land cover/use maps. Field inventory data were collected from over 1000 sites across the country to assist the process of land characterization and the development of a dynamic and representative overview of land cover and land use in Bangladesh. The system has been applied to the development of a wall-to-wall national land cover map for the year 2015. In this article, the methodological process and results of NLRS formulation and land cover map 2015 are presented. We also provide examples of how this interoperable system and the land cover dataset are being used for variety of applications including national forest resources assessment, estimation of REDD+ activity data, integration of biophysical and socioeconomic information, and semantic similarity assessment.

Bangladesh is a country of divergent climatic condition throughout the year which has a complex influence in economic and social aspects, mainly for its geographic location and physiographic condition. Rajshahi division, located to the north western part of Bangladesh has a tropical wet and dry climate. The climate of Rajshahi is generally marked with monsoons, high temperature, considerable humidity and moderate rainfall. The objective of this study is to conduct a climatic study with 30 years (1987-2016) of climate data (rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, sunshine and wind speed) in order to observe the climate variability and to provide the projected changes in the climate variables for the next 20 years to ascertain the future seasonal variation for climate change. The station of Rajshahi city is selected for this study as Rajshahi is situated on the Barind track for which it is more vulnerable in case of drought. In order to fulfill the requirement of the objective secondary data from the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) has been collected. Trend analysis and regression analysis using SPSS and Excel software have been conducted to analyze the variation and trend line of climatic parameters during 1987-2016. The regression equations and the coefficient of determination (R2) have been obtained through linear regression. The study found that the climate of Rajshahi is changing gradually which has a significant impact on the seasonal variation of climate parameters. The annual maximum temperature of 1987-2016 increased but the annual average rainfall showed a decreasing trend over the Rajshahi region by 5.64 mm per year. Again it is seen that July was the maximum monsoon rainfall month and December was the lowest rainfall month. The annual average relative humidity was found to increase. During summer season, approximately 4 hours sunshine is intense all over the year but during the winter season, which lasts for three months, intense sunshine is reduced to 2 hours. The monthly average wind speed in Rajshahi is about 3 knots or 5.56 km/h.