Sustainable production zoning for agroclimatic classification using GIS and remote sensing

Agriculture is a primary productivity sector which is highly dependent on environmental conditions. The agroclimatic potential of agricultural areas has to be assessed in order to achieve sustainable and efficient use of natural resources in combination with production maximization. Temperature and rainfall, in terms of quantity and spatiotemporal variability, are variables which determine the type of crops suitable to a given location. Rainfall variable can also be interpreted as availability of sufficient water required for production of given crops. These variables, in combination with soil type and geomorphology, also determine areas where high levels of production are appropriate, avoiding the threat of degrading the natural resources. In the current work, zones indicating water availability are combined with topographic features and soil types in order to identify areas for sustainable production. Firstly, aridity index (AI) and vegetation health index (VHI) are used in order to define zones adequate for sustainable farming according to water limitations. As crop growth is affected by water supply, these zones are named water limited growth environment (WLGE) zones. AI and VHI are computed on monthly time step for twenty hydrological years, from October 1981 to September 2001. VHI is derived from NOAA/AVHRR data, while in AI computations both satellite and conventional field data are used. Then, WLGE zones are combined with soil maps and a digital elevation model (DEM) of the area under investigation in order to define zones appropriate for sustainable production. The study area is the aquatic district of Thessaly, located in Central Greece. The current application has resulted in the definition of sustainable production zones by means of parallelepiped supervised classification using the two indices, soil maps and DEM. These zones can be further used for agroclimatic classification