Land Suitability Evaluation for Alfalfa in Khajeh Region Using the Parametric Square Root method and Fuzzy Set Theory

One of the best agricultural policies in developing countries for food security is the evaluation of arable lands and agricultural potential to support the current and future agricultural uses. FAO framework for lands suitability evaluation uses a Boolean mapping approach which has been criticized by a number of authors, because the Boolean representations ignore the continuous nature of soil, landscape variation and uncertainties in measurement. In this research, the parametric Square Root Method via a Fuzzy Set Theory was used to evaluate the suitability of alfalfa for 7335 ha lands in Khajeh region located in East Azerbaijan province. The analysis was done with MATLAB analytical software. The results revealed that, calculated correlation coefficients values between the land index and yield with fuzzy method was (r= 0.917) more than that with the Parametric method (r= 0.685) and relatively large difference in calculated correlation coefficients revealed that, there was a need for calibration of the Sys proposed tables about requirements of the climate, landscape and soil in this region. Based on the suitably selected transition zone, MATLAB Software was able to accurately estimate the weights. Although the fuzzy approach provided better results than the parametric square root method, but its results surely depended on the type and determination of the transition zone and membership functions.