Assessment of Susceptible Land for Some Agricultural Crops in Some Regions of West Azerbaijan Province using Geographical Information System

In recent years, some specialized software has been developed for land evaluation goals that the common aspect of them is the generation of an environment for patterning and modeling of evaluation methods. The purpose of the present study is the assessment of susceptible land for irrigated maize, sunflower and barely crops in Jaldyan and Pasveh regions with an area of 9680 ha lain between 36o30΄ to 36o50΄ N latitude and 45o05΄ to 45o25΄ E longitude in West Azerbaijan province by GIS technique. After determination of climate, soil and landscape characteristics of the region, crop requirements of land utilization types were determined using the tables developed by Sys and Givi, and finally land suitability was recognized by ArcGIS software. Results show that in the surveyed region, the climatic classes are highly suitable (S1) for irrigated barely and moderate suitable (S2) for maize and sunflower due to the limitation of relative humidity of the growing cycle. Also, the most important soil limiting factors for crops production are pH, CaCO3, texture, coarse fragments and topography in areas. It is suggested that, this method of overlaying two or more map layers to produce a new map, to be used more in land evaluation, because it is very difficult and time-consuming by traditional methods. In other words, using GIS in land suitability surveys increases the accuracy and progress of research.