Land suitability analysis for rice cultivation based on multi-criteria decision approach through GIS

Geographic Information System (GIS) has demonstrated itself as a very powerful tool in agricultural research and natural resource management. This study proposes an empirical methodology for analyzing and mapping of land suitability using the GIS techniques. The study area happens to be the Morobe province in the Papua New Guinea. This paper examines multi-criteria decision approach to determine land suitability for rice cultivation based on different variables, like topography (slope and aspect of the land), physical (texture, water holding capacity and depth) and chemical (pH, nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus) soil properties, climate (temperature and rainfall) and land accessibility that are mandatory inputs to land suitability model. These parameters are obtained from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data, soil data base of PNG, monthly and annual temperature and rainfall data, respectively. ArcGIS 10 and Erdas 11 model builder/maker are used to construct the index model for rice land suitability analysis. The province of Morobe has been classified into five categories of rice suitability. The result indicates that only four percent (4%) land can be demarcated as high and twenty one percent (21%) as medium high suitability categories in the study area and the spatial expanse of all the five categories within the province are mapped and displayed