Land suitability assessment for Olive cultivation using GIS and multi-criteria decision-making in Mersin City, Turkey

Cultivation-based land suitability has become an essential research topic because of increased interest in agricultural sustainability and negative environmental effects due to rapid population growth and a decrease in arable lands due to urbanization. Therefore, this study investigates land suitability for the olive plant, which has a high economic value in the Mediterranean city of Mersin, Turkey. First, areas that cannot be cultivated were excluded from the study using exclusion analysis so that only agricultural areas were included in the analyses. Afterward, the weightage of the meteorological, topographic, soil, and infrastructural and economical criteria were determined using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and a land suitability map for olive cultivation was created using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The resulting map showed that 2.72% (438.12 km2) of the study area is very suitable for olive cultivation and 0.99% (159.28 km2) is very unsuitable. It was determined that the Tarsus region, located in the east of the study area, and the Mut region, located in the northwest, have very suitable land for olive cultivation