Land cover changes and spatial planning alignment in East Java Province

Abstract According to the East Java Regional Medium-Term Development Plan 2019-2024, East Java is a food barn and the largest contributor to national food availability. On the other hand, East Java is the province with the second-largest population in Indonesia. During the last ten years, East Java’s population growth was 0.79 percent, which caused pressure on land resources and caused rivalry in land use utilization. This will undoubtedly jeopardize East Java’s status as a national food storage facility. The objective of this research is to analyze land cover changes of East Java Province from 2000 to 2020, as well as to analyze the relationship between spatial usage and the spatial plan (RTRW) and develop directions for spatial utilization of East Java Province in supporting its role as a national food barn. The method used in this research is the overlay technique to identify land cover changes and alignment with a spatial plan, and descriptive analysis. The findings revealed that the most common agricultural land cover changes in East Java were as follows, from forests to dryland agriculture, paddy fields to dryland agriculture and built-up areas, and scrubland to dryland agriculture. Through this research, we arrange a direction for spatial utilization of East Java to protect the productive agricultural land and to ensure that this province remains a national food barn in the future.