GIS and AHP-Based Agricultural Land-Use Suitability Analysis in Semi-Arid Regions of Southeastern Türkiye

Abstract

This study aims to identify agricultural land suitability in Mardin province, located in the semi-arid Southeastern Anatolia Region of T & uuml;rkiye. Within this framework, eight ecological criteria were selected to assess agricultural land suitability. Criterion weights were derived from expert judgments using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) method. The criteria were evaluated within the framework of the five classes used in agricultural land-use suitability, in accordance with the guidelines of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Based on this classification, maps of the determined criteria were prepared using Geographic Information Systems (GISs), and an agricultural land-use suitability map was produced using a weighted overlay approach. The results indicate that 31.3% of the total land area in Mardin province falls within the highly and moderately suitable classes. For validation, the suitability map was overlaid with the Coordination of Information on the Environment (CORINE) Land Cover (CLC) 2018 data, revealing that 98.8% of highly suitable (S1) areas and 94.6% of moderately suitable (S2) areas correspond to existing agricultural lands. Furthermore, Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis yielded an Area Under the Curve (AUC) value of 0.815, indicating an acceptable-to-good discrimination ability and confirming the robustness of the model.