The zoning of ecological capability of maize cultivation using geographic information system (GIS) in Boukan country

The guarantee of food security and agricultural livelihoods requires a comprehensive and systematic approach aimed at sustainable use and management of natural resources through the development and adaptation of agricultural technology and management experiences. Accordingly, the objective of this research was to find suitable sites for maize cultivation in Boukan, Iran. The present research is applied in term of purpose, descriptive-exploratory in term of research type and library in term of data collection method. To accomplish this research, two main criteria, environment (with parameters such as geology, soil science, land use, plant cover, water resources as well as digital elevation map layer) and climate (with parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind, annual precipitation and evapotranspiration) were first separately studied and then in combination, so that in the first stage, climate data from five peripheral stations of Boukan county for an 21 years old period (since 1985-2005) and environment data based on the scale of 1:50000 were collected. In the next step, after extracting the ecological requirements of maize, these data were valuated based on the priority of their influencing on maize cultivation using analytic hierarchical process (AHP) method. Then, the total area of Boukan county were analyzed, identified and ranked for maize cultivation using GIS and other related softwares. finally sheet in order to this product. The results of this research showed that the northern regions of the Simineh (with 13.2% of the country’s area) has the most suitable potential and Ael-Gaverk rural district (located in southwest of Boukan with 6% of the total country’s area) has the most unsuitable potential for maize cultivation.