Integrated analysis of land suitability of rural areas in the aim of planning and management of border regions of Portugal

Biophysical land planning aims to choose the land uses according to soil suitability, contributing to integrated and economically sustainable land use. The unprecedented expansion of the human need for resources requires an approach to decisions regarding land use that would ensure the maintenance of biodiversity and sustainable natural resource utilization for the continued delivery of ecosystem services. Suitability is a measure of how well the qualities of a land unit match the requirements of a particular form of land use. The process of land suitability classification is the evaluation and grouping of specific land areas in terms of their suitability for a defined benefit. There are different methodologies for determining the soil suitability for agricultural systems or natural and seminatural ecosystems, including agricultural uses, forest plantations, agroforestry areas, and priority areas for nature conservation. Many of these methods rely on decision support systems based on multicriteria spatial analysis. In the proposed chapter, we intended to determine the different levels of suitability for land use in the subregion of Beira Baixa, located in the center of Portugal, near the border with Spain. To this effect, we present a land suitability model based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) that incorporates a set of climate, soil, and topographic variables. Implementing this spatial data analysis approach could be valuable for stakeholders in land use planning and management.