FAO guidelines and geospatial application for agroforestry suitability mapping: case study of Ranchi, Jharkhand state of India

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Photo by PROJETO CAFÉ GATO-MOURISCO on Unsplash

Photo by PROJETO CAFÉ GATO-MOURISCO on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Agroforestry has potential for achieving agricultural sustainability having capacity of optimizing its productivity by mitigating climate change impacts. The aim was to find such land patches which can be potentially mapped as suitable and fertile for agroforestry projects and to find out land-use systems which can play a pivotal role in poverty eradication and climate change mitigation. The study aims for applying geo-spatial technology towards visualizing various land, soil, climate and topographical data to reveal trends and interrelationships and to find a nutrient availability and agroforestry suitability map. FAO based land suitability criteria was adopted to generate agroforestry suitability maps based upon scientifically evaluated weight factors at GIS platform by integrating layers of LULC, NDVI, wetness factor, elevation, slope percent, drainage, watershed, rainfall, organic carbon, pH and nutrient status. About 6% of land is under cultivation of pure agriculture whereas the study area has agroforestry suitability of 32.8% of total area. Block wise agroforestry suitability reveals highly suitable percentage for Rahe, Bundu and Namkum blocks as 79.1, 56.5 and 1.1%, respectively. Based on high suitability percentage Rahe block among all should be prioritized. Therefore, if there is scientific planning with adequate technical inputs, the area can achieve tremendous scope for tribal and rural people in generating their livelihood. Such finding may work as guiding tool for the policymakers towards allocation of fund for agroforestry projects. The advance GIS modeling software has the potential to map such area logically and meaningfully.