Land suitability assessment in the Namoi Valley of Australia, using a continuous model

Abstract

In an agricultural context, land evaluation is assessment for a specified kind of land utilisation. The final result of agricultural evaluation is a map, which partitions the landscapes into suitable and unsuitable areas for a particular land-use of interest. However, this approach may not represent the continuity of land. Land suitability could be better expressed by a fuzzy approach. In this paper a fuzzy methodology is used to evaluate land suitability in the Edgeroi district for various crops including barley, dryland cotton, oats, pasture, soybean, sorghum, sunflower, and wheat. This is achieved using a membership function to derive a land-suitability membership score ranging from non-suitable (i.e. 0) to suitable (i.e. 1). We express this as continuous land suitability maps using punctual kriging. An expression for overall land suitability (i.e. its versatility) and its capacity with respect to suitability to particular rotations is introduced to highlight the most productive units of soil.