Agroecological zones of the Gaziantep Plateau

Gaziantep Plateau, located in the Euphrates Section of the Southeastern Anatolia Region, was chosen as the study area. In addition to the large land existence, the fact that it is bordered by abundant water resources such as the Euphrates River and the majority of the population in the plateau area is engaged in agriculture, especially the rural poverty, the people's dissatisfaction with agricultural yield and livelihood aroused the question of whether the plateau lands are used in accordance with their potential. For this reason, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHS), which is one of the Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods (MCDM), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used together in this study, which aims to establish agroecological zones in line with the determination of agricultural suitability degrees of Gaziantep Plateau soils. In line with the aim of the study, information on agroecology and organic agriculture was given in the first part, and the general geographical characteristics of the field were presented in the second part. In the third part of the study, in order to determine the agroecological zones of the plateau, the main criteria and their sub-criteria ranges were revealed, taking into account the literature and the natural conditions of the field. Each main criterion was compared with pairwise comparisons, and their scores and weight values were obtained. By using the obtained weight values and sub-criterion scores, the overlapping between the layers was made and the result table and map of the agroecological belts were created. Accordingly, 1% of the plateau land is very suitable for agriculture, 30.3% is suitable, 42.7% is moderately suitable, 24.8% is less suitable and 1.2% is suitable for agricultural activity. is not. It is thought that natural factors are among the reasons that limit suitable agricultural areas in the plateau area, as well as user-induced errors.