Browsing by Author "Melku, Amare"

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    Application of GIS and Remote Sensing for Coffee Growing Land Suitability Analysis: The Case of Guraferda District, South West Ethiopia
    (Addis Ababa University, 2021-03) Melku, Amare; Legas, Dr. Asmamaw
    Land suitability analysis is a prerequisite to achieve optimum utilization of the available land resources for sustainable agricultural production. One of the most important and urgent problems in the study area were to identify the best place of coffee growing area. In Guraferda district, coffee is the most important cash crop but the production is very low due to misuse of land resources. The aim of this study was to develop a suitability map for coffee growing areas based on physical and climatic factors of production using geospatial Technique. This study is intended to determine suitable land for coffee cultivation in Guraferda District, South west Ethiopia region, using multi-criteria decision schemes through GIS and Remotely Sensed imagery processing. It covers a total area of about 2565.42 km2. Relevant biophysical variables of land use land cover, soil, climatic, and topography were considered for suitability analysis. All data were stored in ArcGIS 10.7 environment and the factor maps were generated. For Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE), Pair wise Comparison Matrix known as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied and the suitable areas for coffee growing land were identified. To generate present land use/cover map, landsat 2020 satellite image was classified using ERDAS Imagine 2015 by means of supervised classification. The satellite image and DEM data were obtained from Ethiopian geospatial institute. In addition to these; the meteorological data such as annual rainfall and temperature also obtained from the Ethiopian Meteorological Agency. Next to this, the soil data that incorporated the soil type, texture, PH and drainage were acquired from Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency. Reclassification and Weight overlay analysis was applied to classify the study area into five coffee suitable zone classes. Accordingly the result indicated that 57.19% the study area is determined as Highly Suitable (HS), 39.51% of the study area also determined as moderately Suitable (MS) and the remaining 3.3 % of the district analyzed as low suitable for coffee cultivation. This research provided information at local level that could be used by coffee farmers, investors and coffee unions to select coffee farming land, growing patterns and suitability and governments give attention best sites for coffee growing areas to maximize the exporting earning dollars. Keywords: Suitability Analysis, coffee cultivation, AHP, Weighted overlay analysis, Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach.