Determination of suitable fields for sunflower production in konya city by geographical information systems (GIS) and multi-criteria decision making analysis (MCDM)

Developing technology and rapid population growth have led to the unconscious use of natural resources. As a result of that, the need for effective use and management of resources has emerged in order to transfer them to future generations. Land is a scarce resource that has many usage areas in human activities. One of the most important usage area of the land is agriculture. For as much as the basic nutritional needs of living things are met thanks to agricultural lands. In order to prevent unconscious agriculture in the decreasing agricultural lands in the world, the principle of sustainability in agriculture has been put forward. In the success of sustainable agriculture, the regional suitability analysis of the products is important in terms of increasing the yield. Regional suitability analysis includes multiple criteria, so it is a complex process of transactions involving Multi-Criteria Decision Making analyses. In this study, it is aimed to determine the regional suitability of sunflower cultivation as a result of the integration of Geographic Information System and Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Method in Konya province. Accordingly; as a result of determining the weights of the criteria with FAHP, transferring these criteria to the GIS environment in a common coordinate system and performing the analysis, the most suitable areas for sunflower cultivation were determined. In order to determine the most suitable areas, meteorological, topographic, soil, infrastructure and economic criteria were used. Expert opinions were consulted for the weighting of the parameters and the produced suitability map was divided into 5 categories according to the land suitability classification of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In the suitability map of the study area, areas that are very suitable for sunflower production constitute only 14.57% of the study area and very low suitable areas constitute 24.02% of the study area.