LAND SUITABILITY EVALUATION USING GIS FOR VEGETABLE CROPS AT SHARADANAGAR, CHITWAN, NEPAL

Abstract

The present research was conducted at Chitwan district of Sharadanagar to evaluate land suitability integrating with Geographical Information System (GIS) technology-incorporates the multi criteria evaluations (MCE) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in 2014. Three major vegetable crops were selected for analysis viz. potato, cauliflower, and radish. Existing geo-data base from National Land Use planning was used and analyzed. The physical suitability was performed by vector-based index modeling in GIS taking soil, land capabilities and land use database into account. The relative importance of each main criterion was determined using AHP procedure. In final model soil, land capability class and land use were given 0.65%, 0.24% and 0.09% weight, respectively having CI of <10%. The study revealed that, potato was highly suitable to the context of 40% of area (582.55 ha), 11.99% (170.72 ha) moderately suitable and 20.35% marginally suitable (298.65 ha) for potato cultivation while only 11.7% (167.6 ha) was highly suitable for radish cultivation. Similarly, 13% of the area (188.9 ha) was highly suitable for cauliflower cultivation. The area not suitable for these vegetable crops should be allocated for another use for optimum utilization of soil resources. This study therefore, revealed that scientific agricultural planning at local level should be based on soil characterization. The soil not suitable for Potato, Radish and Cauliflower should be used for another crop for optimum production.