Combination of Fuzzy and AHP methods to assess land suitability for barley: Case Study of semi arid lands in the southwest of Iran

Land suitability analysis, commonly known as land evaluation, is considered an interface between land resource survey and land use planning and management. Land evaluation be carried out to estimate the suitability of land for a specific use such as arable farming or irrigated agriculture. There are several established techniques for generating land suitability evaluation. This research was carried out to evaluate the capability of a combined fuzzy AHP method for land suitability evaluation for barley crops in the southwest of Iran, and to compare the results with the standard method of the FAO framework. Eight soil parameters were chosen for cropland suitability analysis and thematic maps were developed with Kriging method for each of these parameters. Different fuzzy membership functions obtained from the literature were employed and weights for each parameter were calculated according to AHP. Landscape and soil requirements for barley were determined based on the FAO method. Finally, land suitability classes were provided for each land unit. Comparing the results with expert judgments shows that the fuzzy AHP method has a higher accuracy than the standard FAO method. Further development of the fuzzy AHP method would be advantageous for improving the accuracy of land suitability analysis.