Using Fuzzy-AHP and order weight average (OWA) methods for land suitability determination for citrus cultivation in ArcGIS (Case study: Fars province, Iran)

The aim of this research is to determine the land suitability for cultivating citrus in Fars province, Iran. To reach the mentioned aim, a fuzzy method and order weight average (OWA) methods are used for preparing the fuzzy map of each parameter in GIS. At first, some parameters like the water availability (well, spring and river), roads network, aspect, elevation, slope, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, rainfall, relative humidity, sunshine hours, and growing degree days (GDD) were used as input data. After preparing the interpolation map by using IDW, fuzzy map was prepared for each layer by using the fuzzy membership function. Then based on the importance degree of each data, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method is applied to determine each layer weight and land suitability map. Consequently, the study area is classified into 56.16% as not suitable, 7.69% as low suitable, 25.41% as medium suitable and 10.75% as suitable. Also the results of OWA showed that with increasing risk (no trade-off), all of the study area had good condition for citrus cultivation. In addition, with decreasing risk (no trade-off), almost all of the study area had not suitable for citrus cultivation.