# Ecological Suitability Evaluation for Conservation and Development in Bac Kan Province, Vietnam
## 4 Discussion  
The IER model applied in this study focuses on the internal logic of a landscape entity that is composed of its structure, function and dynamics resistance to construction and development activities. By considering the structural stability, functional importance, and dynamic adaptability of natural ecosystems under the IER model, this study provides a comprehensive framework to identify significant ecological indicators and to evaluate the ecological resistance for construction and development in Bac Kan province. However, the study confronts some limitations because of the specific condition of the study area as well as data availability.  
In principle, three fundamentals of landscape ecology, namely, structure, function, and dynamics applied in the IER model are considered to be sufficient for studying landscape ecology; however, the indicators for characterizing them have not been yet given with common agreement among researchers. In this study, only population density at the district level was applied to characterize social disturbance intensity in the whole study area. However, gross domestic product (GDP), which is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period, is another important indicator for describing social disturbance intensity is not used here due to unavailable GDP data at the district level. If this data is available, it will be useful for enhancing the result. Additionally, the spatial resolution of the collected data is not totally consistent since these  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Future Direction** & **District** & **Area (\#m\({}^{3}\))** & **Development Area (\%)** & **Ecological Protection Area (\%)** & **Ratio \({}^{1}\)** \\ \hline Prior areas for & Ngan Son & 645.36 & 5.28 & 58.88 & 0.09 \\ conservation & Na Ri & 853.15 & 16.26 & 30.64 & 0.53 \\ Beach Thong & 546.39 & 25.98 & 25.36 & 1.02 \\ \hline Comprehensive & Ba Be & 683.24 & 36.19 & 16.51 & 2.19 \\ development areas & Cho Don & 911.03 & 32.86 & 14.53 & 2.26 \\ Pac Nam & 476.73 & 43.86 & 11.62 & 3.77 \\ \hline Prior areas for & Cho Moi & 605.41 & 64.81 & 6.37 & 10.17 \\ development & Bac Kan & 137.02 & 80.64 & 3.55 & 22.73 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} \({}^{1}\) The ratio of the development area to the ecological protection area.  
\end{table}
Table 17: Future direction at the district level in Bac Kan province.  
Figure 13: The proposed future direction at the district level in Bac Kan province.  
data are usually produced for different purposes. However, to minimize the effect of the difference of spatial resolution, the resampling technique is applied to standardize the input data with a cell size of 30 m, the same as DEM. These data provide the highest spatial resolution in the raster dataset.  
In addition, the weight assignment might introduce uncertainty into the results, since the evaluation itself was a subjective process [91; 92]. However, this quantitative evaluation provides a relatively objective with scientific visualization to understand the ecological impact of construction and development and their constraints. In the future, the weight settings should be adjusted in different scenarios to obtain the optimum choice for the objective of the development plan for decision makers or policy makers.