Evaluation of flue-cured tobacco planting suitability and crop rotation planning based on spatial information

Abstract

Digital precision agriculture has become a new trend for agricultural development in the world. The kernel technology of digital precision agriculture is spatial information technology. It is an important way to improve the capacity of sustainable development of flue-cured tobacco,using planting suitability evaluation and crop rotation planning based on spatial information technology. The land surface parameters used for conventional agricultural zoning and suitability evaluation are all based on the observation sites. Since the density of observation sites is very limited,it is difficult to obtain high-precision data in a large area. Therefore land surface parameters retrieved from remote sensing can be used to replace the parameters based on the observation sites. It can make the planting suitability evaluation and crop rotation planning more scientific and reasonable. Based on temperature,solar radiation and soil moisture obtained from remote sensing and DEM,with the support of topography,soil and land use factors derived from database,Suitability Evaluation Index (SEI) of flue-cured tobacco planting suitability in Luxi County is calculated at a 100 m×100 m grid size. The classification and spatial distribution of suitability evaluation results are then used to plan the crop rotation of flue-cured tobacco. Results show that the rate of crop rotation in Luxi County increased from 37.8% in 2002 to 63.7% in 2008,and there is still a wide gap to the goal rate of 95%. The planting utilization rate of most appropriate area is only about 28.1%,and there are about 2165 ha of most appropriate area for potential development. Therefore,in order to optimize the allocation of land resources,the planning of crop rotation should give first priority to flue-cured tobacco planting in most appropriate area. As remote sensing has reliable data support and has good ability to make up for the distortion of data caused by observation site loss,for planting suitability evaluation,remote sensing has more superiority than observation sites. Spatial information based crop rotation planning,verifying and supervising have good ability to improve the crop rotation rate of flue-cured tobacco and lay a foundation for sustainable development.