Assessment of Land Suitability Using a Gis-Based Multi-Criteria Analysis for Rice Cultivation in Fogera Woreda, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia
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Date
2024-06-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Land evaluation is a basis for sustainable land resource planning and management. In Ethiopia, national economic growth is highly dependent on agriculture and the land’s productivity is low due to mismanagement of the land, land degradation, and intensive cultivation; this condition is worse in Fogera plain. This study evaluates land suitability for rice cultivation in the Fogera Woreda. A GIS technique with a multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) approach was applied to evaluate the land appropriateness for rice cultivation. Factors that were considered for the analysis of the land suitability for rice cultivation were rainfall, temperature, slope, land use land cover (LULC), soil type, soil texture, soil depth, and soil pH. The weight of influence of each factor was computed by pair-wise comparison technique which is one of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methods. The final rice suitability analysis map was created by combining all factors with their respective weights in the ArcGIS Pro overlay tool. The results of the suitability analysis revealed that 728.5km² (65.9%) was highly suitable, 235.9 km² (21.4%) was moderately suitable, 57.4 km² (5.2%) was less suitable, and 82.7 km² (7.5%) unsuitable for rice cultivation. The results of the research show that the study area has a huge potential area for rice cultivation.
Keywords: AHP, MCE, rice cultivation, suitability analysis, weighted overlay analysis
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Keywords
AHP, MCE, rice cultivation, suitability analysis, weighted overlay analysis