WEB-BASED GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION SYSTEM TO ACCESS LAND SUITABILITY FOR ARABLE CROP FARMING IN EKITI STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This work identifies the most suitable locations for growing arable crops such as cassava, maize and yam, to enhance crop yields, ensure sustainable development and achieve the goals of food security in Ekiti state. The requirements gathering and development of the web-based geospatial information system will further enhance realtime decision making for farmers and agriculture extension workers in the state. Based on accessibility to road, access to water supply, climate, land use/land cover, slope, soil available water capacity, pH, texture, and topsoil organic carbon content; the suitability of the area was determined with a combined fuzzy membership, weighted overlay, and fuzzy overlay approach in conformity with FAO guidelines. Leveraging the potentials of the web to aid easy accessibility to crop-land suitability information is the hallmark of this research. The suitability information was developed based on climate data acquired from the WorldClim database, land use/land cover information obtained from a classification process of Landsat 8 imagery acquired from the US earthexplorer.gov data, soil data obtained from the Harmonized World Soil Database and topographic data from the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) satellite imagery. The SCP plugin version 5.3.8 of QGIS 2.14.17 was used in the classification process, and the ArcGIS 10.2 was utilized in the fuzzy membership, weighted overlay and fuzzy overlay operations. The research reveals that more than 65% of Ekiti state land is highly suitable for common arable crops. Information on land suitability was made available on the web for easy accessibility to users based on the spatially enabled QGIS cloud architecture.