LAND SUITABILITY ASSESSMENT OF RICE CULTIVATION USING GIS AND MCE IN THAI NGUYEN, VIETNAM

Apply GIS in Agriculture

In Vietnam, rice is the most important staple food, and rice cultivation strategies are given the top priority to ensure the nation’s food security and economic development. Efficient planning of rice production requires a comprehensive assessment of suitable land and ecological conditions (Heumann B.W. et al. 2011) [3]. Spatial analyses can enable this critical task by classifying each land unit according to its suitability for rice production. With a case study in Thai Nguyen Province, Vietnam, this study employs Geographic Information System (GIS) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) tools with a particular emphasis on multicriteria analysis. Nine criteria including elevation, slope, temperature, rainfall, irrigation, soil pH, soil composition, depth of soil classes, and soil types, are utilized for the assessment of land suitability. Based on this analysis, land suitability is classified into four categories: highly suitable (S1), moderately suitable (S2), marginally suitable (S3), and not suitable (N). In our case of Thai Nguyen Province in 2020, the findings indicate that there were 29,175 ha of highly suitable (S1), 6,999 ha of moderately suitable (S2), 8,041 ha of marginally suitable (S3) and 538 ha of not suitable (N) for rice cultivation.

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