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Decision Support System of Agricultural Crops and Application of Geographic Information System for Site Suitability Classification
Thesis Abstract:
Assessing the suitability of an area for agricultural crops requires a considerable effort in terms of information collection that presents both opportunities and limitations to decision makers. A decision support system was developed for specified crops based on nine criteria of climatic requirements (average annual precipitation and annual mean temperature), and the quality and characteristics of land (slope, drainage, soil texture, soil depth, soil cation exchange capacity, soil base saturation, and soil pH). The Jambi Province was the case study area.
The main objectives of this study were to develop a land suitability decision support system and to determine the suitability classes for selected crops in study area. The methodology was concerned with producing polygons, including climatic and soil factors; scoring of each factor coinciding with the requirements for each crop; and grading for the suitability classes based on the total score and classification of each class based on the current land available status.
In the system, the user needed to select the most appropriate range of each factor (coincide with his soil environment) in the given combo boxes, then at the end of selection it would give the result that is Highly Suitable (SI) when the grade (S) is equal to 1 or Moderately Suitable (S2) when 1 < S <=2 or Marginally Suitable (S3) when 2 < S < =3 or Not Suitable (S4) when 3 < S < =4.
In Jambi, about 47 percent of the total area was not available for changes in land use classes. The rest (53%) was moderately and marginally suitable for each crop.
Only 0.1 percent was found as not suitable for any crop. The user will be informed of the resulting suitability sites via application of AgriDSS software and WebPages. The next step should involve an on-site investigation. Factors such as water supply, other climatic factors, agronomic practices, or economics that influence the decision of whether land should or should not be used for crop production were not considered in this assessment.