Evaluation of Surface Irrigation Suitability for Selected Crop Suitability Using Gis and Remote Sensing techniques: A Case Of Limmu Kossa District, South West Ethiopia

Abstract

Assessing available land resources for irrigation potential for crop suitability is important to planningthe development of irrigation and crop production potential. This study was initiated to assess the land resources potential of the district for irrigation potential suitability for crop production development by collecting different types of necessary data from a different source by usinga mixed method of data analysis and interpretations with different types of GIS tools such as reclassification, overlay, clip, multiple buffer and others to overcome the problem of land use management and food insecurity. Multi-criteria decision evaluation method was used to evaluate the physical land characteristics of the study area for surface irrigation. There are techniques, which were used to the weight and standardized the factors, which are used to evaluate the land in the study area throughout the pairwise comparison. To identify potential irrigable area, the factors reclassified into suitable class based on FAO guideline were physical soil property (texture, depth, and drainage), slope, distance to stream, distance to market and land use land cover were taken respectively. Accordingly irrigation suitability result were shows, 10716.2ha (8.1%) very suitable, 60821.2ha (46.2%) moderately suitable, 52236.0 ha (39.7%) marginally suitable, 7831.6ha (6.0%) not suitable.Secondly, the land in the study area was evaluated for suitability of groundnut and maize crops by using different factors for both crops. The results regarding maize were shown that, 65332.6ha (49.6%) highly suitable, 58414.3ha (44.4%) moderately suitable and only7858.1ha (6%) was not suitable. For groundnut 63963.2ha (48.6%) highly suitable, 59784.4ha (45.4%) moderately suitable and 7857.4ha (6%) was not suitable.In general, as the result of the study shows most parts of Limmu kossa district was suitable for irrigated agricultural production.