Soil site suitability for sustainable intensive agriculture in Sagar Island, India: a geospatial approach

The procedure of examining the potential land use for intensive cultivation is known as soil site suitability evaluation. It refers to a method of assessing land that assesses how much of the area is potential for enhanced agriculture output. The objective of this work was to delineate the soil attributes and three-dimensionally changeability of soil in the agrarian environs of the coastal saline area of Eastern India and to develop the site suitability of soil for agricultural output on FAO land suitability criteria based on Geospatial and Multi-Criteria evaluation method. Eight soil quality factors-texture, depth, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), organic carbon, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)-were investigated and categorized into highly suitable (S1), moderately suitable (S2), Marginally suitable (S3) and not soil suitable (N) regions. The relevant suitability parameters were ranked using an Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), and the generated weights were employed to develop the suitable map layers in the Arc GIS 10.1 platform through weighted sum overlay algorithms. Soil suitability investigation reveals 20.04% as highly suitable, 33.94% as moderately suitable, 32.51% as marginally suitable, and 13.51% as unsuitable for sustainable intensive agriculture. Additionally, around 53.98 percent of the region is covered by the highly and moderately suitable ranges due to loamy textural class, ideal soil pH and high NPK concentration, which can be suggested for intensive agriculture in the selected study region. Furthermore, the marginal coastal areas have been rendered unsuitable for farming as a result of severe climatic catastrophes like cyclones, elevated saline soils and insufficient soil depth. Results of this research can be applied to advance crop management strategies throughout the study's targeted region and on the surrounding coastline Islands, which are diversifying and intensifying their agricultural production. Hence, an effective and appropriate tool for evaluating site suitability is the GIS-based AHP model. This can be utilized examine similar studies on coastal islands of the Indian Subcontinent.

Automated summary

Soil site suitability evaluation is a procedure for examining the potential land use for intensive cultivation. This study aimed to evaluate the soil attributes and variability in the agrarian environs of the coastal saline area of Eastern India and develop site suitability for agricultural output based on FAO land suitability criteria and Geospatial and Multi-Criteria evaluation method. The results have important implications for improving crop management strategies in the study area and surrounding coastal islands.