Land suitability evaluation for agricultural use using GIS and remote sensing techniques: The case study of Ma’an Governorate, Jordan

Abstract

The present study illustrates the Spatial-temporal dynamics of Land use/Land cover (LULC), and locate land suitability for agricultural use. Landsat satellite images of three different years 1990, 2000 and 2018 over 28 years were acquired from Global Land Cover Facility Site (GLCF) and earth explorer. Land suitability for agriculture use was assessed on five criteria; rainfall, temperature, slope percentage, soil types and water Wells distribution. The different geospatial layers were transferred using suitability coding system to produce the suitability maps for rainfed and irrigated areas using weighted overlay method. Ma’an Governorate covers approximately 37% of the total area of Jordan, and consists mostly of uncultivated land 33304.66 km2 (99.49%). Three main LULC classes were identified of the three years; 1990, 2000 and 2018; forest and irrigated areas have been fluctuated between 86.00 km2 (0.26%), 108.06 km2 (0.32) and 102.68 km2 (0.31%), built-up area increased by 24.00 km2, (0.07%), 41.88 km2 (0.13%) and 68.66 km2 (0.21%), while the bare land has been decreased from 33366 km2 (99.67%),33476 km2 (99.55%) and 33304.66 km2 (99.49%) during 1990, 2000 and 2018 respectively. land suitability for the agricultural use (rainfed areas and irrigated crops); Data from the five parameters (mentioned above) are used for spatial analysis applying weighted overlay method. The results showed that only about (0.2%) from the total area of Ma’an is highly suitable for agriculture dependent on rainfall. While about (1.4%) is high suitable for the irrigation crops. The main reason of the low levels of land suitability for agriculture is very low soil fertility, and the water scarcity.