Comprehensive Evaluation of the Suitability of Agricultural Land in Myanmar

Abstract

Myanmar is a country with an economy based on agriculture. It has rich agricultural resources and great potential for development. The development of agriculture in Myanmar is becoming increasingly important to international food security. Assessments of agricultural land resources in Myanmar are the basis for the country's agricultural development and for food security evaluations. In this paper we used the MaxEnt model to analyze the relationship between the suitability of land for agricultural reclamation and the main environmental variables in Myanmar, and then constructed a model to comprehensively evaluate the suitability of land for agriculture in Myanmar. The results show that: 1) the overall accuracy of the MaxEnt model is high (AUC>0.8), which means there is a high correlation between the database of selected environmental indicators and the true distribution of cultivated land in Myanmar. 2) Soil depth is the most important factor affecting the suitability of land for agriculture in Myanmar. When the thickness of soil layer is less than 100 cm, the suitability of land for agriculture is low. With respect to topographic conditions, slope is the main factor affecting suitability. When the slope is greater than 20 degrees, the suitability of land for agriculture is low. With respect to climate conditions, precipitation is the main influencing factor. There is a positive correlation between river network density and land suitability. 3) Currently, 400 000 km2 of the land resources in Myanmar are suitable for agriculture, and of this amount 290 000 km2 are highly suitable, accounting for nearly 40% of the country's land area. The highly suitable land is distributed mainly in Magway, Sagaing, Ayeyarwady and Yangon provinces. The provinces are also important grain production areas in Myanmar, and this serves to validate the effectiveness of the method used in this paper.