GIS and AHP Based Techniques for Agricultural Land Suitability Assessment in Erbil Province, Kurdistan region, Iraq

Abstract

The study area comprises Erbil province, Kurdistan region, Iraq. Thirty-five soil samples have been taken from different districts. Several soil analyses have been performed in order to find soil loss as a criterion for land suitability assessment. The other criteria were elevation, slope, aspect ratio, and land use and land cover (LULC). All used criteria have been weighted using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology to find their priorities in order to use them on weighted overlay methodology (WOM) based on the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technique. Integration of AHP and GIS have been utilized in purpose to find the land suitability based on five classes; high suitable (S1), moderately suitable (S2), marginally suitable (S3), not suitable (N1), and not suitable permanently (N2). The result of land suitability shows that the S1 class is generally located at the northwest of the middle part in the study area extended to the southwest, and it occupies an area of 1243.94 km2 (8.61%). The S2 class occupies a minimum area of 85.52 km2 (0.59%), while the S3 class occupies a massive area relatively about 4886.75 km2 (33.82%). The N1 class occupies the highest area, around 6538.32 km2 (45.26%). At the same time, N2 class takes 1693.16 km2 (11.72%). Both N1 and N2 have an area of 8,231 km2 (56.98%) of the total area while S1, S2, and S3, which takes only 6,216 km2 (43.02%).In this study we found the possibility of using GIS and AHP in order to find the land suitability assessment.