Research of suitability area of agriculture in Coastal CHAOUIA by integration the AHP, IDW, and MCDA to GIS

Abstract

Agricultural expansion in developing countries requires a strategy to develop the agricultural sector in a sustainable and rational manner, despite its complexity to be achieved. The objective of this work is to develop an agricultural Suitability map, based on a flexible and interactive model between several methods, which are the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW), and the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA),integrated into the GIS. The factors selected in this study are slope, elevation, land use, minimum and maximum temperature,also rainfall for both the dry and rainy periods. The analysis of the suitability map revealed the effectiveness of this model, which allowed the detection of areas unsuitable for agricultural development. the Comparison of the suitability map with the 2019 classified map shows that agricultural expansion is highly developed and covers almost the total area, which has had negative consequences on the groundwater quality of the Coastal CHAOUIA aquifer.