Land Suitability Analysis for Potential Agriculture Land Use in Sambhunath Municipality, Saptari, Nepal

Abstract

Rapid and unplanned urbanization and haphazard infrastructure development causes pressure on the finite land resource and there is urgent need to preserve the arable land for food security. Land suitability analysis is a technique in which the land quality assessment is performed through interpretation of land properties for allocation of lands for particular use. The present paper attempts to conduct a land suitability analysis to determine the potential sites for agriculture land use in Sambhunath municipality of Saptari district. The criteria/ factors for the land suitability analysis were identified through literatures and modified in the local context through expert opinions and focus group discussions. The evaluation of agriculture land is accomplished using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) and Geographic Information System (GIS). Agriculture suitability index was developed and optimized qualitatively through the strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis. Finally, potential agriculture suitability index map is prepared. The analysis shows almost 3139 ha (29%) lands as 14 highly suitable and 3001 ha (28%) of moderately suitable agriculture land within the municipality. Almost all the suitable agriculture land is located at low land with flat terrain to gentle slope having high natural fertility and mainly in land capability classes I and II. The unsuitable and poorly suitable agriculture land is occupied in the undulating areas and hilly terrain of the Siwalik hill. The study found the GIS tool integrated with MCE-AHP useful in land suitability evaluation process and anticipated that it could act as the planning tool to allocate lands in land use planning for sustainable agricultural practices.

GIS based Approach for Suitability Analysis of Residential Land Use

“…Each criterion is then broken into rankings according to their weights inside the criterion's variable. To establish a link between current residential area conditions and other influencing elements or criteria, the multi-collinearity method is utilized to analyze the one independent variable highly correlated with one or more of the other independent variables, and the sub-categories are then categorized (Karna et al 2021). Based on correlation values as a measure of priority, these subcategories were ranked.…”

“…Consistency ratio is used to evaluate weight estimation. The performance matrix is thought to have a limited acceptance level if the consistency ratio is less than 0.1; otherwise, the pairwise relationship of the criterion is rejected (Karna et al 2021).…”

“…At present, Nepal is recorded within the top ten nation in the world with the fastest urbanization growing rate (UNDESA 2015). High population growth rates in urban and semi-urban areas lead to rapid unplanned urbanization and haphazard infrastructure development (Karna et al 2021). After eradication of malaria and construction of east-west highway, migration primarily occurred in rural areas in Tarai region for urbanization (Khanal 2000).…”

“…Also, GIS is used for visualization tool that ability to mix many sorts of data to aid in better decision-making. LSA is also used the multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) technique that is based on the decision maker's personal preferences, weighted criteria, and assessments of attaining the goals (Malczewki 1999, Karna et al 2021. Research in GIS-based MCE falls into two categories: first, the field of application is expanding; and second, more MCE techniques have been incorporated into GIS-based land-use suitability analysis.…”

“…In this study, GIS-MCE decision-making tool is applied for site selection of residential area from handling large amount of spatial information. So, MCE-AHP has been used extensively in addressing difficult issues with a variety of parameters at multiple levels by interacting these parameters in common traits (Tiwari et al 1999, Karna et al 2021. In this study, GIS-MCE-AHP models is applied as a cost-effective and time-efficient approach for spatial decision making and play vital role for identifying the potential areas for residential use (Rossiter 1996).…”