Scholarly record

GIS APPROACH FOR ASSESSMENT OF SLOPE SUITABILITY THE UNITED TERRITORIAL COMMUNITY-S LANDS FOR AGRICULTURAL PURPOSE

Natalia Bubyr

Abstract

The issue of suitability the territory for agricultural use has always been an important for rational land use organization. One of the factors in this assessment is the slope of the territory as an indicator of its suitability for growing crops. For instance, in Ukraine, the law prohibits plowing slopes steeper than 7 degrees. Traditionally, the method of assessing the suitability of the territory for agricultural use includes several stages: 1) identification of zones with different slope steepness and degree of land erosion, 2) calculation of their areas and compilation the corresponding explication, which consist land plots and their degrees of erosion, 3) creation of a land suitability map for agricultural use. The use of GIS and remote sensing data can significantly increase the efficiency of this process. The purpose of this article is to highlight the results of our research on the implementation of GIS to assess of slope suitability for agricultural use by determining the steepness of slopes and the degree of land erosion with GIS analysis tools, such as Slope (Spatial Analyst Tools - Surface - Slope). Some features of work depending on the type of source functional surface (GRID or TIN) are described, as well as - several ways to vector relief surfaces - automatically through the use of Surface Slope (3D Analyst Tools - Triangulated Surface - Surface Slope) and through the creation of a new Shapefile with appropriate digitization. The theoretical statements are illustrated by creating of multi-scale GIS map of Zinkivska UTC Poltava’s region of Ukraine. The map displays localization of spots (areas) where are certain restrictions on use in agriculture, such as: 1) areas with certain restrictions due to the slope of the surface, 2) areas that are prohibited from plowing at all, 3) areas that are withdrawn from agricultural use according to Ukrainian legislation, for example lands around water bodies, objects of nature reserve fund, etc. On the whole, implementation of GIS technologies for assessment of slope suitability the united territorial community’s lands for agriculture can significantly increase the efficiency of this process both time saving and providing of basic data for scientific justification of the necessary environmental measures, which should be implemented to this area.

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