A critical review on agro-ecological approaches to identify sustainable crop production using the application of GIS and RS

This paper deals with a critical overview of agricultural production, ecological suitability, land use based on effective environmental parameters using geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) techniques. Although academic research on agro-ecology in sustainable development has increased significantly over the past 10 years, there are deficiencies in the comprehensive literature review and classification of that research. For that reason, we reviewed 235 articles on crop production from 23 journals published between 2000 and 2014, and then classified those by the year of publication, the journals in which they appeared, their application fields, and on ecological approaches within the context of agricultural land use management and crop production. Our research provides information about trends in agricultural land use management research by examining the publication years of the articles, and provides practitioners and researchers with insight and future direction on sustainable development based on Different ecologic approaches using various methods. Thereby, this review paper provides unified sources of references that could be useful for researchers, stakeholders, policy-makers, decision-makers and students as well. This paper also indicates future trends to consider more in climate conditions on crop production.