Abstract
The rapid increase in urbanization forced the change in land-use patterns from agriculture to impermeable residential. This phenomenon will negatively affect both direct and indirect agricultural employment opportunities and productivity. A systematic technique helps in recovering the decremental agricultural land proportion. Spatial analysis of a region is a leading scientific method for land characteristics and suitability assessment. Land suitability can assist in the creation of agricultural productivity growth strategies. Geographic Information System (GIS) is successful in multiple criterion-based decision approaches. This study considered bare land extracted by supervised classification on the collected georeferenced Landsat-8 satellite image as the study area. Organic compounds, conductivity, pH, and soil texture were the criteria for estimating the suitable regions for agricultural activities in our study area, Sivanthipatti village, Tirunelveli district. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) helped to assign weightage for the selected criteria. The combined AHP and GIS technique includes creating an AHP hierarchy, defining evaluation criteria, conducting pairwise comparisons, and creating criterion maps and land suitability analysis maps. The criterion weightage determined from AHP for pH, organic carbon content, salinity, and soil texture is 54.86%, 28.05%, 11.51%, and 5.58%, respectively. This analysis estimated that around 1750 acres of land are readily suitable for agricultural land-use conversion from its existing bare land surface.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Authors declare that data are available on request.
References
Ahmed GB, Shariff ARM, Balasundram SK, Fikri Bin Abdullah A (2016) Agriculture land suitability analysis evaluation based multi criteria and GIS approach. In: IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. Institute of Physics Publishing 37:1–8
Akinci H, Özalp AY, Turgut B (2013) Agricultural land use suitability analysis using GIS and AHP technique. Comput Electron Agric 97:71–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2013.07.006
Atul K, Pramanik M, Chaudhary S, Negi MS (2021) Land evaluation for sustainable development of Himalayan agriculture using RS-GIS in conjunction with analytic hierarchy process and frequency ratio. J Saudi Soc Agric Sci 20(1):1–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssas.2020.10.001
Bagheri M, Sulaiman WNA, Vaghefi N (2013) Application of geographic information system technique and analytical hierarchy process model for land-use suitability analysis on coastal area. J Coast Conserv 17(1):1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11852-012-0213-4
Benítez J, Delgado-Galván X, Izquierdo J, Pérez-García R (2012) Improving consistency in AHP decision-making processes. Appl Math Comput 219(5):2432–2441. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.AMC.2012.08.079
Bhunia GS, Shit PK, Maiti R (2018) Comparison of GIS-based interpolation methods for spatial distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC). J Saudi Soc Agric Sci 17(2):114–126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssas.2016.02.001
Bozdağ A, Yavuz F, Günay AS (2016) AHP and GIS based land suitability analysis for Cihanbeyli (Turkey) County. Environ Earth Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-016-5558-9
Chakrabortty R, Pal SC, Malik S, Das B (2018) Modeling and map** of groundwater potentiality zones using AHP and GIS technique: a case study of Raniganj Block, Paschim Bardhaman, West Bengal. Model Earth Syst Environ 4(3):1085–1110. https://doi.org/10.1007/S40808-018-0471-8
Chozom K, Nimasow G (2021) GIS- and AHP-based land suitability analysis of Malus domestica Borkh. (apple) in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, India. Appl Geomat 13(3):349–360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12518-021-00354-7
Chu HJ, Jaelani LM, Van Nguyen M, Lin CH, Blanco AC (2020) Spectral and spatial kernel water quality map**. Environ Monit Assess. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08271-9
Elaalem M, Comber A, Fisher P (2011) A Comparison of fuzzy AHP and ideal point methods for evaluating land suitability. Trans GIS 15(3):329–346. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1467-9671.2011.01260.X
FazeliSangani M, NamdarKhojasteh D, Owens G (2019) Dataset characteristics influence the performance of different interpolation methods for soil salinity spatial map**. Environ Monit Assess. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-019-7844-y
Ghorbani MA, Deo RC, Kashani MH, Shahabi M, Ghorbani S (2019) Artificial intelligence-based fast and efficient hybrid approach for spatial modelling of soil electrical conductivity. Soil Tillage Res 186(March):152–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.still.2018.09.012
Hama AR, Al-Suhili RH, Ghafour ZJ (2019) A multi-criteria GIS model for suitability analysis of locations of decentralized wastewater treatment units: case study in Sulaimania, Iraq. Heliyon 5(3):e01355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01355
Hamidy N, Alipur H, Nasab SNH, Yazdani A, Shojaei S (2016) Spatial evaluation of appropriate areas to collect runoff using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Geographical Information System (GIS) (case study: the catchment “Kasef” in Bardaskan. Model Earth Syst Environ 2(4):1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/S40808-016-0230-7/TABLES/7
He Y, Wang W, Chen Y, Yan H (2021) Assessing spatio-temporal patterns and driving force of ecosystem service value in the main urban area of Guangzhou. Sci Rep 11(1):3027–3056. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82497-6
Husson O, Brunet A, Babre D, Charpentier H, Durand M, Sarthou JP (2018) Conservation Agriculture systems alter the electrical characteristics (Eh, pH and EC) of four soil types in France. Soil Tillage Res 176:57–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.STILL.2017.11.005
Ikechukwu MN, Ebinne E, Idorenyin U, Raphael NI (2017) Accuracy assessment and comparative analysis of IDW, spline and kriging in spatial interpolation of landform (Topography): an experimental study. J Geogr Inf Syst 09(03):354–371. https://doi.org/10.4236/jgis.2017.93022
Ishizaka A, Labib A (2011) Review of the main developments in the analytic hierarchy process. Expert Syst Appl 38(11):14336–14345. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ESWA.2011.04.143
Jeykumar RKC, Chandran S (2019) Impact of urbanization on climate change and geographical analysis of physical land use land cover variation using RS-GIS. Global NEST J 21(2):141–152. https://doi.org/10.30955/gnj.002701
Kahsay A, Haile M, Gebresamuel G, Mohammed M (2018) Land suitability analysis for sorghum crop production in northern semi-arid Ethiopia: Application of GIS-based fuzzy AHP approach. Cogent Food Agric. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311932.2018.1507184
Kazemi H, Akinci H (2018) A land use suitability model for rainfed farming by Multi-criteria Decision-making Analysis (MCDA) and Geographic Information System (GIS). Ecol Eng 116:1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2018.02.021
Khan W, Jamshed M, Fatima S (2020) Contribution of agriculture in economic growth: a case study of West Bengal (India). J Public Aff 20(2):1–10. https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2031
Kılıc OM, Ersayın K, Gunal H, Khalofah A, Alsubeie MS (2022) Combination of fuzzy-AHP and GIS techniques in land suitability assessment for wheat (Triticum aestivum) cultivation. Saudi J Biol Sci 29(4):2634–2644. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sjbs.2021.12.050
Kirubakaran M, Johnny JC, Samson S (2018) MODFLOW based groundwater budgeting using GIS: a case study from Tirunelveli Taluk, Tirunelveli District, Tamil Nadu, India. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 46(5):783–792. https://doi.org/10.1007/S12524-018-0761-7
Kumar S, Das P, Maity B, Rudra S (2021) Understanding future urban growth, urban resilience and sustainable development of small cities using prediction-adaptation-resilience (PAR) approach. Sustain Cities Soc 74(July):103196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103196
Lal R (2016) Soil health and carbon management. Food Energy Secur 5(4):212–222. https://doi.org/10.1002/FES3.96
Mazur P, Gozdowski D, Wójcik-Gront E (2022) Soil electrical conductivity and satellite-derived vegetation indices for evaluation of phosphorus, potassium and magnesium content, pH, and delineation of within-field management zones. Agriculture 12(6):883–899. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture12060883
Mendas A, Delali A (2012) Integration of multicriteria decision analysis in GIS to develop land suitability for agriculture: application to durum wheat cultivation in the region of Mleta in Algeria. Comput Electron Agric 83:117–126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2012.02.003
Mendas A, Mebrek A, Mekranfar Z (2021) Comparison between two multicriteria methods for assessing land suitability for agriculture: application in the area of Mleta in western part of Algeria. Environ Dev Sustain 23(6):9076–9089. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-01012-5
Mishra AK, Deep S, Choudhary A (2015) Identification of suitable sites for organic farming using AHP & GIS. Egypt J Remote Sens Sp Sci 18(2):181–193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrs.2015.06.005
Ngoune Liliane T, Shelton Charles M (2020) Factors affecting yield of crops. In: Amanullah Agronomy—climate change and food security. IntechOpen, pp 18–33
Odu GO (2019) Weighting methods for multi-criteria decision making technique. J Appl Sci Environ Manag 23(8):1449. https://doi.org/10.4314/jasem.v23i8.7
Parry JA, Ganaie SA, Sultan Bhat M (2018) GIS based land suitability analysis using AHP model for urban services planning in Srinagar and Jammu urban centers of J&K, India. J Urban Manag 7(2):46–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jum.2018.05.002
Paul EA, Morris SJ, Conant RT, Plante AF (2006) Does the acid hydrolysis-incubation method measure meaningful soil organic carbon pools? Soil Sci Soc Am J 70(3):1023–1035. https://doi.org/10.2136/sssaj2005.0103
Penn CJ, Camberato JJ (2019) A critical review on soil chemical processes that control how soil pH affects phosphorus availability to plants. Agriculture 9(6):120. https://doi.org/10.3390/AGRICULTURE9060120
Pilevar AR, Matinfar HR, Sohrabi A, Sarmadian F (2020) Integrated fuzzy, AHP and GIS techniques for land suitability assessment in semi-arid regions for wheat and maize farming. Ecol Indic. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2019.105887
Pramanik MK (2016) Site suitability analysis for agricultural land use of Darjeeling district using AHP and GIS techniques. Model Earth Syst Environ. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40808-016-0116-8
Prout JM, Shepherd KD, McGrath SP, Kirk GJD, Haefele SM (2021) What is a good level of soil organic matter? An index based on organic carbon to clay ratio. Eur J Soil Sci 72(6):2493–2503. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejss.13012
Ramamurthy V, Reddy GPO, Kumar N (2020) Assessment of land suitability for maize (Zea mays L) in semi-arid ecosystem of southern India using integrated AHP and GIS approach. Comput Electron Agric. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2020.105806
Saaty RW (1987) The analytic hierarchy process—what it is and how it is used. Math Model 9(3–5):161–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/0270-0255(87)90473-8
Saha S, Sarkar D, Mondal P, Goswami S (2021) GIS and multi-criteria decision-making assessment of sites suitability for agriculture in an anabranching site of sooin river, India. Model Earth Syst Environ 7(1):571–588. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40808-020-00936-1
Santhosh LG, Sivakumar Babu GL (2018) Landfill site selection based on reliability concepts using the DRASTIC method and AHP integrated with GIS—a case study of Bengaluru city, India. Georisk. https://doi.org/10.1080/17499518.2018.1434548
Seyedmohammadi J, Sarmadian F, Jafarzadeh AA, McDowell RW (2019) Development of a model using matter element, AHP and GIS techniques to assess the suitability of land for agriculture. Geoderma 352:80–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2019.05.046
Susaiappan S, Somanathan A, Sulthan MT (2021) Suitability of water sources for domestic and irrigation purpose around corporate dumpsite. Pol J Environ Stud 30(4):3803–3812. https://doi.org/10.15244/PJOES/131201
Tashayo B, Honarbakhsh A, Akbari M, Eftekhari M (2020) Land suitability assessment for maize farming using a GIS-AHP method for a semi- arid region, Iran. J Saudi Soc Agric Sci 19(5):332–338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssas.2020.03.003
Ullah KM, Mansourian A (2016) Evaluation of land suitability for urban land-use planning: case study Dhaka City. Trans GIS 20(1):20–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/TGIS.12137
Van Alphen BJ, Stoorvogel JJ (2000) A functional approach to soil characterization in support of precision agriculture. Soil Sci Soc Am J 64(5):1706–1713. https://doi.org/10.2136/SSSAJ2000.6451706X
Venkatesh B, ThippuMannarSulthan MAM (2022) An automated geoprocessing model for accuracy assessment in various interpolation methods for groundwater quality. In: Paul PK, Choudhury A, Biswas A, Singh BK (eds) Environmental informatics, 1st edn. Springer Nature Singapore, Singapore, pp 285–299
Yanto AA, Santoso PB, Sumiyanto (2022) Landslide susceptible areas identification using IDW and Ordinary Kriging interpolation techniques from hard soil depth at middle western Central, Java Indonesia. Nat Hazards 110(2):1405–1416. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-04982-5
Zandi S, Ghobakhlou A, Sallis P (2011) Evaluation of spatial interpolation techniques for map** soil pH. In: MODSIM 2011—19th International Congress on modelling and simulation—sustaining our future: understanding and living with uncertainty. pp 1153–1159
Zhong Y, Zhang L (2012) An adaptive artificial immune network for supervised classification of multi-/hyperspectral remote sensing imagery. IEEE Trans Geosci Remote Sens 50(3):894–909. https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2011.2162589
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest in preparing this article.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Baskaran, V., Madasamy, M., Kumar, S.P. et al. Modeling the land suitability for agricultural utility in a semi-arid region of Tirunelveli district, South India using multi-criteria and geospatial approach. Model. Earth Syst. Environ. 9, 3527–3537 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40808-023-01706-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40808-023-01706-5