Developing agricultiral land use scheme based on agro-ecological zonning for Seyhan River basin

The major aim of this study was to build a dynamic agro-ecological zoning approach based on incorporating landscape units and spatial modelling of environmental factors, which are affecting agricultural production, and related environmental risk processes in the case of Seyhan River Basin. In this extend landscape units derived through overlay analysis of environmental factors, were enhanced with agro-ecological perspective and as a result of this process appropriate crop pattern was proposed considering optimum land use efforts. These optimal agricultural land use options will enable the balancing of trade offs between land use and conservation activities to diminish the detrimental impacts of improper land use on natural environment. The essential environmental factors such as climate, land cover, topography, geology, and soil properties were spatially created in the first step of agro-ecological zoning process for Seyhan Basin using Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS). Landscape units were derived and erosion as one of the major environmental risk process in the area was modelled within GIS environment using these data. Additionally, water budget of each landscape units were calculated using related environmental factors for 23 crop groups proposed in the basin. Suitability indices were produced from layers of water budget, soil properties, temperature, erosion and then merged to a single suitability index layer for each crop group using Multi Criteria Analysis. These suitability indices were used to qualify each landscape units to one of the defined agro-ecological zones. Finally, ecological landscape planning suggestions were presented for optimal land use by generating crops suitability indexes and ranking in terms of agro-ecological zones of Seyhan River Basin.