Developing a Land Suitability Decision Support Tool for Rice

Development of a land evaluation decision support system to identify the suitable lands for selected crops is necessary. The aim of the present research was to develop a land suitability evaluation system based on the FAO framework, with some modifications to suit the local conditions. For this purpose, a model was made by GIS capability and integrated with modeling function using Visual Basic. This model was based on a hierarchy process rather than a set of AHP model. For equilibration of the model, soil data were obtained from 60 soil profiles located in Amol region (Mazandaran Province, Iran), covering about 3200 ha. Fourteen land characteristics and their suitability degrees were determined and categoried in eight land qualities. The results of F test between land indexes calculated by FAO method and Decision Support Tool were not significantly different (P>5%). Also, the calculated correlation coefficients between land index and observed production by Decision Support Tool method was r= 0.85, more than that of FAO (r= 0.77). Besides, the overall overlap between the FAO and Decision Support Tool with the observed production point map was 86% and 95.4 %, respectively. Thus, Decision Support Tool provided good results by using land qualities and considering local conditions. Finally, based on these results, it can be concluded that the developed system can help farmers and experts as a decision support tool.