Land Suitability Evaluation Using Fuzzy Continuous Classification (A Case Study: Ziaran Region)

Abstract

Because conventional Boolean retrieval of soil survey data and logical models for assessing land suitability treat both spatial units and attribute value ranges as exactly specifiable quantities, they ignore the continuous nature of soil and landscape variation and uncertainties in measurement which can result in the misclassification of sites that just fail to match strictly defined requirements. The objective of this research is to apply fuzzy set theory for land suitability evaluation in Ziaran region in Qazvin province, Iran. The study area was divided into 15 land units and 9 land characteristics considered to be relevant to irrigated wheat. The weight contributions of individual characteristics to observed yield were determined using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The use of the fuzzy technique is helpful for land suitability evaluation and classification of continuous variation, especially in applications in which subtle differences in land characteristics are of a major interest.