Site selection of suitable land for plantation development of Prosopis cineraria species using GIS (Case study: Rahmatabad watershed, Kerman province)

Prosopis cineraria is a native species in the south of Iran and it include of compatible species in this area. This species contains has been a wide distribution but discrete in the past, but it's limited regions in now. This research done in investigating possibility of plantation development for Mesquite (Prosopis cineraria) in Rahmatabad watershed of Rigan county, the East Kerman province. The aim of this study was to site location and identify suitable land for development and implementation of the ecological requirements of the species, according to the ecological characteristics of the study area in the East of the province. For this purpose, the method of multi-criteria evaluation has been based on Analytical Hierarchy Process. During this process were identified the natural characteristics and specific requirements of Mesquite and then calculate the weight of each characteristic by weighted analytic hierarchy process (AHP), the final map of the habitat area was prepared for the development of Mesquite trees. The results showed that the total area of 37286 ha, about 3423 ha of the land where good capability, 13521 ha the average capability, 17343 ha low capability and 2999 ha for the plantation of Mesquite has without capability. Using the results of this study can recognized prone areas of Mesquite using the MCE method in GIS and for the plantation of this species in places with good habitat can be planned in the future.