Site suitability for agriculture from barren land using remote sensing and GIS

In recent days, the land area utilized for agriculture is getting reduced day to day due to rapid urbanization. The main objective of the work is to identify the barren/unused lands that can be used for the purpose of agriculture using remote sensing and geographic information system, so that there will not be losses due to improper site selection. The suitability of land was assessed on five criteria; type of soil, climate, slope percentage, rainfall and wells distribution. The different geospatial layers were transferred to generate maps of rainfed and irrigated areas by using weighted overlay method. Land suitability analysis paves the way to derive the type of crop to be cultivated based on the five criteria (mentioned above). Initiating the work in Erode district of Tamil Nadu in India, whose administrative headquarters is located at Erode city Main source of income in the district is from the agriculture sector. Total cropped area is 1,37,625 in hectares (23.89% of the total area) and the forest area is 2294.46 in sq.km (2019).