assessment of environmental suitability for sugar beet planting in torbat- e- heydarieh city using geographic information system (gis)

this study aimed to determine the prone areas for sugar beet planting with regards to their major effective factors. climatic data of 1998-2009 period were obtained from the local stations of khorasan razavi meteorological bureau. the topographic data including altitude, slope, slope direction, and tin layers were extracted from 1:250000 topographic maps of cartographic organization, iran. the land use and vegetation land cover maps were prepared from 1:250000 maps of national soil and water research institute. the geographic information system (gis) was used for numerical calculation and map drawing. after the spatial geo-database of the region was developed, the descriptive data of the maps were added to it using the arcgis software. then, with regards to the climate needed by sugar beet and based on the views of the experts, each layer weight and its importance in analytic hierarchy process (ahp) was determined using expert choice software. finally, through overlay analysis in gis the potential, cultivated areas for sugar beet cultivation were classified. results of the final zoning maps showed that 59.61% of torbat- e- heydarieh area (3745.82 km-2) has a great potential for sugar beet planting and about 24.49% of the areas were not suitable for planting of the crop. among agricultural regions, rokh hill and kadkan region (north of torbat- e- heydarieh) were highly suitable for sugar beet planting followed by markazi plain.