Feasibility Study of Rapeseed Cultivation in Izeh County by Using Geographical Information System (GIS)

Identifying and determining  appropriate ecological areas for  appropriate bedding in regional planning, especially the agricultural sector is vital and important. Depending the economy of rural people on agriculture, potential of the study area for agriculture, suitable climatic conditions and multi seasons, appropriate soil, variable environmental conditions and determining and separation of the potentials and obstacles of the Izehfrom the view point of the production percentage and efficiency of rapeseed  cultivation shows the importance of this study.
The aim of this research is to study the feasibility  and identify the agriculture potential and capability of Izhe area for rapeseed cultivation through studying the natural and climatic features and to study the effectiveness of all these features.
12 Layers were used including: height, slope, erosion, geology, soil, land use, land cover, climate type, mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation, annual maximum temperature, and annual minimum temperature. To do this research, we used analytical hierarchy process(AHP) in the Geographical information system(GIS) environment, such that weighting to the applied criteria was according to relevant experts comments, scholars and the resources within and between the layers. Then, the regional territories were divided to five categories , very good, Appropriate, Average, weak and Inappropriate and its zoning map was prepared. The results showed that from 3779/39 sq km of Izeh area, the very good category of this 565/15997 sq km is 14/95 percent, the second category (Appropriate) of  963/15997 sq km is 25/48 percent of this region. Therefore, more than 40 percent of the studied area has ideal and favorable conditions for cultivation of rapeseed. The other ecological zones i.e average, Weak and Inappropriate categories have 22/49, 20/34 and 16/02 percent of this County area respectively. The final map denotes the  Suitable zone with green  color  in central part and  unsuitable zone for planting rapeseed with orange color in the main four directions.