Assessing Ability of Land for Planting Canola inWest Azerbaijan Province Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approaches

Canola plant production is the source of 15 percent of the world total vegetable oil production which is the third largest seed oil production after soybean and oil palm. The objective of this research was to identify the suitable areas for planting Canola in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. Hence information on climatic data from 67 weather stations were collected and analyzed. Climatic data such as temperature, precipitation, degree days, relative humidity, number of frost days, and sunshine hours were colleded from synopotic and climatological stations, and also gauge resource data such as topography, slope, slope direction, soil depth, and land use were prepared. Each of these data was studied regarding to favorable climatic and ecological needs of Canola. Information layers on each of them were made by data generalization to layers and processing them using GIS technology. In this research, multiple criteria decision method (MCDM) based on AHP method was used in order to prioritize, and assess the criteria and information layers regarding each other, and determine their weight. By weighting the provided layers based on intended criteria and model, layers were overlaid and special analysis was done in GIS system and the final map of assessment of land capacity was generated for Canola cultivation. According to the results, lands of the Province in terms of climatic and environmental potentials were categorized into four levels: very suitable 15.2 percent, suitable 52.1 percent, average 25.4 percent, and weak 7.3 percent.