Growing rice (Oryza sativa L.) in the northern Gangetic plains of India. How suitable are they? A GIS-based multi-criteria analysis

Abstract

This study focuses on land suitability analysis, wherein the land best suitable for rice crop cultivation was identified in the Gangetic plains of India. The project was done with the help of a geographical information system (GIS)-based multi-criteria analysis approach using the Q-GIS long-term version (free software). Annual precipitation, annual mean temperature, slope, and the distance from rivers were the criteria selected for creating the suitability map. The suitability factors were ranked with the help of an analytical hierarchical process. The resultants were then used to construct the suitability map using QGIS long-term release version. One factor which can alter our results obtained here is the use of river distance as a criterion. In this paper, we wanted to see which areas will be highly suitable for rice cultivation if only the river water is used for irrigation. This is done to avoid the overexploitation of the groundwater resources for irrigation which nevertheless is depleting at an alarming rate in India. The maximum distance for river water irrigation was taken as 20 km. Although, after using distance from the river as a criterion, our results show that the Gangetic plain is moderately suitable for rice cultivation.