Land evaluation is a critical step in land‐use planning. Although many methods have been developed since the formulation of the FAO framework for land evaluation, several of the more traditional approaches still remain in widespread use but have not been adequately evaluated. Contrary to more recent land evaluation systems, which need considerable data, these systems only require basic soil and landscape information to provide a general view of land suitability for major types of land use.

Land evaluation is the act of predicting the use potential of land on the basis of its attributes. The objective of this study was to evaluate qualitative and quantitative land suitability for the north-west of Iran on the basis of a FAO model for sunflower and maize crops. Growing cycle was determined using the CDBm (Monthly Climate Database) model and soils were classified in two orders of Mollisols and Vertisols, which consisted of seven soil families based on soil data and Keys to Soil Taxonomy 2010.

The inference rules relating land characteristics to suitability class are crucial to the estimation of agricultural land suitability. In fuzzy logic modeling for agricultural land evaluation, the fuzzy inference, based on membership functions and rule aggregation, is constructed with predetermined evaluation criteria, including value ranges for fuzzy linguistic terms, and weights of land variables. However, most existing evaluation criteria systems are built on the basis of expert knowledge and can be highly subjective and contain uncertainty.

A land suitability study covering an area of 56,655 square kilometers was carried out for the cultivation of a halophytic bioenergy crop, Salicornia bigelovii, in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi using data collected from an extensive soil survey (scale of 1:100,000). Two simple limitation methods (referred to in the paper as the conservative and weighted methods) were used to interpolate soil map unit data for qualitative evaluation of the land.

The dry rangelands of West Asia and North Africa are fragile and severely degraded due to low rainfall and mismanagement of natural resources. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) interventions are used to increase soil moisture content, vegetation cover, and productivity. However, adoption of rainwater harvesting by communities is slow. To understand adoption constraints and to develop options for sustainable integration of rainwater harvesting, a benchmark watershed was established in the dry rangelands of Jordan.

Site selection is a key factor in any aquaculture operation, affecting both success and sustainability as well as solving conflicts between different activities and making rational use of the land. The study was conducted to identify appropriate site for the farming of giant prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii, in Companigonj of Noakhali, Bangladesh using GIS-based multi-criteria evaluation taking 20 base layers of water quality, soil characteristics and infrastructure facilities.

Wind farm siting can be considered as Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem that consists of set of alternative locations and set of selection criteria. This study applied multi-criteria decision making approach using Analytical Hierarchy Process with Ordered Weigh Averaging AHP-OWA aggregation function to derive wind farm land suitability index and classification under Geographical Information System (GIS) environment. Linguistic quantifier’s version of AHP-OWA aggregation function was used to classify lands based on their suitability for wind farm installation.

The Kalahari ecosystem is characterized by natural resource conflicts and land-use pressure resulting from intensification of human activities. This paper addresses three issues of concern associated with the Kalahari ecosystem resource management: (i) the major land-use/land cover shifts in the Kalahari ecosystem since 1970 and the resulting pattern in vegetation species composition, cover and density; (ii) the possible explanations for the observed shifts; and (iii) the possible resource conflicts likely to arise.

New developments in geographic information science and technology are changing the way we apply GIS to developing-world agriculture, creating new opportunities to utilize the technology to address problems of disaster management, climate change, land use change, land degradation, crop analysis and impact assessment.GIS allows data and demographic information to be presented graphically, primarily in maps, but also in business tools such as charts, graphs and other reports.

The geological environment has been heavily polluted by chemical substances over the past few decades. Pollution sources located on the earth’s surface or underground have affected the quality of the environment. A significant amount of impact could be reduced if the allocation of potential pollution sources was based on an evaluation of environmental conditions. The main objective of this study was to develop a methodology for the allocation of potential pollution sources by employing GIS and multi-criteria evaluation techniques.

This work describes a methodology for Strategic Environmental Assessment of urban areas in Latin America based on the recently approved European Planning Directive, and applies it to the Metropolitan Area of Concepción (Chile). The method is based on the Land Suitability Index (LSI), a cartographic GIS-based index originally developed for the region of Barcelona (Spain) and aimed at determining the suitability of each point in a region for urban development, considering three sub-indexes: (i) Naturalness, (ii) Ecological Connectivity and (iii) Natural Risk.

The aim of this research was to determine physical land evaluation of hazelnut areas of Ordu-Unye and its vicinity. The study area, is located between west of Ordu and south of Samsun provinces, at coordinates 4542500-4537500 km N and 342500-347500 km E (UTM), covers approximately 31.5 km2. The study area consists of various topographic features such as, hilly and rolling physiographic units commonly. Elevation varies from 200 m to 600 m above sea level. Average annual precipitation and temperature are 1162.4 mm and 14.2ºC, respectively.