Assessment of interpolation methods in zoning the spatial need for power in Khuzestan agriculture

Abstract

Achieving development depends on the comprehensive cognition and accurate awareness about facilities, opportunities, strengths and limitations that exist. Several criteria such as mechanization level deficiency, aging factor of tractors, ratio of area under cultivation (ha) to tractor unit and harmonic mean of agricultural crop yields were used to identify the opportunities and deficiencies in development of agricultural power in Khuzestan province and also to zoning the need for new powers using weighted overlap. For this purpose, to zoning each of aforementioned criteria, different interpolation methods were investigated using GIS software and then the best one was selected by mutual evaluation methodology and also the best RMS was determined. Results showed that the spatial dependency of the variables is moderate and aging factor of tractor has low level of spatial dependency. Based on this, accuracy of Kriging and deterministic interpolation methods is almost same. The most appropriate interpolation method for zoning of mechanization level, aging factor, the harmonic mean of agricultural crop yields and ratio of area under cultivation (ha) to tractor unit was LPI, GPI, LPI, IDW, LPI and RBF, respectively. Zoning of mechanization level deficiency showed eastern and some parts of western regions interface intense mechanization level deficiency. In weighted overlap of generated maps using fuzzy-AHP, ratio of area under cultivation (ha) to tractor unit criterion has assigned the highest weight (0.30, 0.41, 0.54). As a result, regions of Khuzestan province were placed in three need levels as high, moderate and low.

Keywords

• zoning
• agriculture power distribution
• interpolation
• fuzzy-ahp