Year: 2025 | Month: June | Volume 12 | Issue 1

Geospatial Evaluation of Soil and Land Suitability for Sustainable Maize Cultivation

Norbert J. Ngowi Emmanuely Z. Nungula Sagar Maitra Ann N. Karuma Jamal Nasar and Harun I. Gitari
DOI:10.30954/2347-9655.01.2025.1

Abstract :

Tanzania’s soil data is insufficient for local strategies on agricultural land use planning since it is extremely specialized to locations deemed to have great promise based on a small amount of data. The study used geographical informatics to understand soil suitability for maize crop production in Tungi Village agroecosystem, Morogoro District, Morogoro Region. This has implications for food security, poverty, and climate in the area. Three criteria were used in the suitability analysis to determine which areas would be best for growing maize: soil properties, topography, and climate. Each criterion was assigned a weight value using the Multi-Criteria Evaluation’s Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. Through ArcGIS 10.8, cumulative weights for each criterion were employed to create the soil result maps. Results show potassium, cation exchange capacity, total nitrogen, and organic carbon were sufficient. The climate
and topography were ideal for growing maize crops. S1 (vastly appropriate), S2 (fairly suitable), and S3 (minimally suitable) were determined by the land suitability results to be around 51% (2,555 acres), 34% (1,677.5 acres), and 15% (767.5 acres), respectively. It is therefore placed that the soil suitability map would be a tool for local agro-land use decision-making in Tanzania and beyond.

Highlights

  • The study employed Geographic Information Systems (GIS) integrated with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate land suitability for maize cultivation, enabling precise and data-driven decision-making.
  • Study use three evaluated criteria soil, climate, and topography soil properties (e.g., pH, organic carbon, nitrogen, potassium, CEC) were found to have the highest impact on maize suitability.
  • The analysis revealed that 51% of the land was highly suitable (S1) for maize production, while 34% was moderately suitable (S2), and only 15% minimally suitable (S3).


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