Analysis of Potential physical Land Suitability for Surface Irrigation in Loma Woreda, South West Ethiopia

Abstract

Land suitability is a very important task faced by town planners and managers, being to identify the most appropriate spatial pattern for future urban settlement area, based on this, examinations and implication of appropriate land location for urban area development is critical issue in any developing town. This study demonstrate the use of GEOSPATIAL TECHONOLOGY and numerical Multiple evaluation (MCE) techniques for examine and shows the suitable land for urban settlement area of mizan-aman town. Eight factors were taken into account for criteria evaluation (groundwater, slope, road proximity, urban center proximity, LULC, soil depth, soil texture, river proximity).Weights for each creation are generated by comparing with each other according to their importance .criteria weight was developed by employing GIS based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) such as Analytical Hierarchy process (AHP) for examining. The suitability map was obtained from weighted overlay in arc map tool spatial analyst: so that from this suitability map a total area of 4126Hectare it was found that, 230.79 hectare is under highly suitable, 3027.63hectare falls under moderately suitable, 853.95hectare is falls under less suitable, 14.16hectare is falls under unsuitable area. Generally, from a total the study area 73.63% was under moderately suitable and also south west part of a town Shasheka is highly suitable relative to the other kebeles because 1295ha total area of the kebele 118ha is highly suitable and no area is under unsuitable land form this kebele to urban area expansion so that south west area of the town is more suitable for expansion. The present study allows the local people as well planers for the appropriate plans of land use planning in suitable urban land development and the implication of suitable location for urban growth of town based on international and local factors