Climate Change Impact on Land Suitability Evaluation for Some Rainfed Crops in Miandoab Region

Nowadays, considering the importance of food security, understanding the impact of climate change on land suitability for crop production has become an important issue. The main goal of the present research was to evaluate the climate change impacts on different rainfed crops land suitability under current and future climate change scenario in Miandoab region. For this purpose, Terraza and Almagra models were used in MicroLEIS DSS environment. Almagra model provides evaluation of the suitability of different land units for selected utilization types and Terraza model provides an experimental prediction for bioclimatic deficiency. Morphological and analytical data were obtained from 11 control soil units and saved in the SDBm soil database. Agro ecological data were obtained from Iran Meteorological Organization and saved in the CDBm climate database. Greenhouse gas emission scenarios were selected as future scenarios of climate change from models of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) . The results revealed that, in the present conditions and in most of the different land units, the suitability order of crops are chickpea >melon> wheat. However, in the future it will be wheat> chickpea> melon. The most important soil limiting factors were salinity, texture, drainage, and lime content. The net effect of climate change on land suitability is negative, except for wheat, and therefore, in climate change conditions, the study area is unsuitable for production of chickpea and melon as rainfed crops . Loss of moisture with increasing drought index in the Terraza model showed that, in future, rainfed cultivation scenario seems to be highly affected by water stress.