Crop Suitability Analysis for Kabini Command Area Using RS and GIS Techniques—A Multi-criteria Approach

Water and land are the finite natural resources to be utilized for their optimum productivity. The management of these resources for sustainable development is the need of the hour. The modern techniques such as remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) are used for creation of digital database of different thematic maps which require to assess the land suitability for different crops based on the land suitability. The suitability of land is assessed considering the cropping system, for optimizing the use of piece of land for a specific use (FAO, 1976). The suitability is a function of crop requirements and land characteristics, and it is a measure of how well the qualities of land unit match the requirements of particular form of land use. The study area chosen is Kabini Command which spreads in Mysuru and Chamarajnagara districts. It is geographically located between 76°12′0″ E and 77°12′0″ E longitude and 11°58′0″ N and 12°16′0″ N with an area of 707.284 km² and is covered in Survey of India (SOI) Toposheet numbers 57H04, 57H03, 57D16, 58E01, 58A13, 57D12, 57D08, 58A05 and 58A01 on 1:50000 scale. RS and GIS techniques are used in the application to estimate the command area, watersheds within the command and preparation of different thematic maps. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP), RS and GIS have shown as an efficient tool to derive the crop suitability within the command area.