Geospatial Technology for Agricultural Land Site Suitability Assessment in Upper Vellar River Basin, South India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11137/1982-3908_2025_48_67567Keywords:
Remote Sensing, GIS, Land capability factorsAbstract
Agriculture is one of the oldest and prime activities of the human being. It has remained an important source of food. In spite of growing industrialization and urbanization in the world, nearly fifty per cent working population still engaged in agriculture. To make an in depth and comprehensive study, the main objectives present research is to analyze the changes in agricultural land use in the study region, to demarcate and to analyze the agricultural cropping land suitability and methods of cultivation, and to suggest remedial measures for the better agricultural planning and development of Upper Vellar River basin, Tamil Nadu, India using geospatial technology. Depending on their significance and importance in the agriculture seven different constraints and criteria were selected. The identification of different criteria depended on maximum limitation method that influences the product yield of agriculture which includes topographic wetness index (TWI), land use and land cover (LULC), soil, drainage density, slope, aspect and geology. The derived land suitability zones were classified into five classes i.e., not suitable, poor suitable, moderately suitable, highly suitable, and very high suitable zones. The not suitable zone cover 35 sq.km (1%) found in Belur, and Valapadi, poorly suitable zone covers 688 sq. km (8%) found in near Tammpampatti, Moderately suitable zone covers 976 sq.km (36%) found in northern part of study area, southern parts of the study area, highly suitable zone covers 1092 sq.km (43%) found in northern and central part of the study area and Very high suitable zone covers 152 sq.km (17%) found in Central and southern part of the total study area. Paddy crop is useful for developing in the highly suitable zone. The oilseed is the better decision to develop in the moderately suitable zone of the study area. In the low suitable region of study area, it is preferable to grow wheat. Examining the agricultural management plan of the study area shows that only 17% of the area is currently used for agricultural activities. Highly suitable lands for agriculture are the most suitable lands for agricultural production. These lands have the highest potential for agricultural production.
Downloads
References
Akinci, H., Özalp, A.Y. & Turgut, B. 2013, ‘Agricultural land use suitability analysis using GIS and AHP technique’, Computers and electronics in agriculture, vol. 97, pp. 71-82.
Atalay, I. 2006, ‘Toprak Olusumu, Sınıflandırılmasıve Cografyası’, Meta Basım Matbaacılık, Izmir.
Bera, S., Ahmad, M. & Suman, S. 2017, ‘Land suitability analysis for agricultural crop using remote sensing and GIS-A case study of Purulia District’, International Journal for Scientific Research & Development, vol. 5, no. 6, pp 999-1024.
Boori, M.S., Voženílek, V. & Choudhary, K. 2014, ‘Land use/cover disturbance due to tourism in Jeseníky Mountain, Czech Republic: A remote sensing and GIS based approach’, The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Science, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 17-26.
Ravallion, M., Chen, S. & Sangraula, P. 2007, ‘New evidence on the urbanization of global poverty. Population and development review’, vol. 33.
Choudhary, K., Boori, M.S., Paringer, R. & Kupriyanov, A. 2023, ‘Agriculture land suitability assessment for sustainable development using remote sensing techniques with analytic hierarchy process’, Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, vol. 32(2023), 101051.
Moghaddam, D.D., Rezaei, M., Pourghasemi, H.R., Pourtaghie, Z.S. & Pradhan, B. 2013, ‘Groundwater Spring potential mapping using bivariate statistical model and GIS in the taleghan watershed Iran’, Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, DOI:10.1007/s12517-013-1161-5
Everest, T. 2017, ‘Assessment of land use efficiency in Ezine District of Çanakkale’, Türkiye Tarımsal Araștırmalar Dergisi, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 109-123.
Everest, T., Sungur, A. & Özcan, H. 2021, ‘Determination of agricultural land suitability with a multiple‑criteria decision‑making method in Northwestern Turkey’, International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 18, pp. 1073–1088, DOI:10.1007/s13762-020-02869-9.
FAO 1977, A framework for land evaluation. IntInst Land Reclam Improv, Bernan Press.
Feizizadeh, B. & Blaschke, T. 2012, ‘Land suitability analysis for Tabriz County, Iran: a multi criteria evaluation approach using GIS’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, vol. 1, pp.1–23.
Koulouri, M. & Giourga, C. 2007, ‘Land abandonment and slope gradient as key factors of soil erosion in Mediterranean terraced lands’, Catena, vol. 69, no. 3, pp. 274–281.
Moore, I.D., Grayson, R.B. & Ladson, A.R. 1991, ‘Digital terrain modeling: a review of hydrological, geomorphological and biological applications’, Hydrol Process, vol. 5, pp. 3–30.
Morán-Alonso, N., Viedma-Guiard, A., Simón-Rojo, M. & Córdoba-Hernández, R. 2025, ‘Agricultural Land Suitability Analysis for Land Use Planning: The Case of the Madrid Region’, Land, vol. 14, no. 1.
Mustafa, A.A., Singh, M., Sahoo, R.N., Ahmed, N., Khanna, M., Sarangi, A. & Mishra, A.K. 2011, ‘Land suitability analysis for different crops: a multi criteria decision making approach using remote sensing and GIS’, Researcher, vol. 3, no. 12, pp. 61–84.
Nampak, H., Pradhan, B. & Manap, M.A. 2014, ‘Application of GIS based data driven evidential belief function model to predict groundwater potential zonation’, Journal of Hydrology, vol. 513, pp. 283–300.
Perveen, M.F., Nagasawa, R., Uddin, M.I. & Delowar, H.K.M. 2007, ‘Crop-land suitability analysis using a multi criteria evaluation & GIS approach’, Proceedings of 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE5), June 5–9, University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Pourghasemi, H.R., Mohammadym & Pradhan, B. 2012, ‘Landslide susceptibility mapping using index of entropy and conditional probability models in GIS: Safarood Basin, Iran’, Catena, vol. 97, pp. 71–84.
Pourtaghi, Z.S. & Pourghasemi, H.R. 2014, ‘GIS-based groundwater spring potential assessment and mapping in the Birjand Township, southern Khorasan Province Iran’. Hydrogeol Journal, vol. 22. DOI:10.1007/s10040-013-1089-6
Pramanik, M.K. 2016, ‘Site suitability analysis for agricultural land use of Darjeeling district using AHP and GIS techniques’, Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, vol. 2, DOI:10.1007/s40808-016-0116-8
Population Reference Bureau (PRB) 2018, viewed 24 June 2025, <https://www.prb.org/resources/2018-world-population-data-sheet-with-focus-on-changing-age-structures/>.
Ricketts, T. & Imhoff, M. 2003, ‘Biodiversity, urban areas, and agriculture: locating priority eco regions for conservation’, Ecology & Society, vol. 8, no. 2.
Tehrany, M.S., Pradhan, B. & Jebur, M.N. 2014, ‘Flood susceptibility mapping using a novel ensemble weights-of-evidence and support vector machine models in GIS’, Journal of Hydrology, vol. 512, pp. 332–343.
Wang, F. 1994, ‘The use of artificial neural networks in a geographical information system for agricultural land-suitability assessment’, Environment and Planning A, vol. 26, pp. 265–284.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
