A THESIS PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES, ARBA MINCH UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN GEO INFORMATICS

Abstract

In Ethiopia, land is usually exploited traditionally by smallholder farmers without land suitability assessment. This study was aimed to analyze the suitability of the land for selected agricultural crop production by using Geographic Information System and Remote Sensing techniques. The factors that were considered for the land suitability analysis for crop production were land use land cover, slope, soil type, soil texture, soil pH, temperature, rainfall, and cat ion exchange capacity. Temperature and rainfall data were gathered from the National Meteorological Agency; soil data were collected from the Ministry of Agriculture; and slope data were acquired via the digital analysis model. Multi-criteria decision and Analytical Hierarchy Process method was used to analyses the land suitability of the study area for Teff and Wheat production. The pair-wise comparison and weighted linear combination methods were used to determine the weight of the factors. Land suitability maps were developed in based on four suitability classes such as highly, moderate, marginally and not suitable for both Teff and Wheat production. The results of the land suitability analysis revealed that 18.4% (27,850ha), 42.6% (65,030ha), 32.8% (49,620ha) and 6.2% (8,480ha) of the area was highly suitable, moderate suitable, marginally suitable and not suitable for the optimum production of Teff, respectively and about 16% (24,290 ha), 40.4% (61,860ha), 37% (55,650ha) and 6.6% (9,170ha) of the area was highly suitable, moderate suitable, marginally suitable and not suitable for Wheat production, respectively. Although there are slight variations between the suitability classes of the area for Teff and Wheat production, the variations between the equivalent classes of the crops are insignificant. The result also showed that over four-fifth (80%) of study area requires applying soil and water conservation, and soil fertility management measures in order to optimize the yield and production of both crops. These studies were restricted in two crops type whereas further studies can be made to increase the choice and identify the best another use of a land.