Abstract

The land productive capacity can be evaluated directly or indirectly. Direct evaluations are carried out in the field, greenhouses or laboratory by means of some experiments under given climatic and management conditions. Indirect evaluations consist basically in developing and applying models of varying complexity, thereby attempting to estimate land productivity. The main objective of this research was to determine land productivity index based on parametric approach using GIS. This study was carried out in Çetinkaya district located on Bafra Delta Plain. The study area covers about 1762.4 ha. After analysing and evaluating topographic, soil physical and chemical properties, result map was generated for land productivity index (LPI) by means of GIS. After LPI taking into rating of soil and topographic parameters was calculated using square root formula, productivity classification was determined for each land mapping unit. According to results, while most of the study area’s land productivity (45.4%-800.0 ha) consist of excellent and good classes (I and II) in terms of agricultural uses, it was found that 19.7% (346.6 ha) of study area has average (III), 25.1% (441.6) of it has poor (IV) and rest of it (9.8%) has extremely poor or nil (V).

Keywords: Land productivity, parametric evaluation, GIS

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