Assessing the Suitability and Availability of Land for Agriculture in Tuban Regency, East Java, Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesian food production depends highly on Java Island, which holds the most fertile soils in the country but had limited area. The objective of the research was to analyse the availability of suitable land for agriculture in Tuban Regency, an agricultural regency in Java Island. Land suitability was evaluated with spatial multicriteria analysis, integrating soil order, land capability, elevation, slope, slope direction, land use/land cover, accessibility, and climate. Land availability was analysed, integrating the forest area status designation and the spatial pattern of regional official land use plan. The results indicated that suitable land for agriculture corresponds to 91% of the total study area, confirming the high soil fertility. Analysis of land availability then indicated that 18% of the area was both suitable and available for agriculture. Considering the actual land utilization, the future development of agriculture in the region has less than 7% of the land area left for agricultural expansion. The overall results showed the importance of looking for land allocated for agriculture outside Java Island to anticipate the need for food of a country with a high population growth rate and also developing planning for food production.

Land-Use Suitability in Northeast Iran: Application of AHP-GIS Hybrid Model

“…The estimated weights were appointed to the related layers and then the raster maps were overlaid and an agricultural land suitability map was generated [32]. Four steps were followed to produce a site suitability map: (1) finding suitable factors to use in the analysis, (2) assigning factor priority (weight) to the parameters, (3) generating a land suitability map of agriculture and grasslands, and (4) determining the suitability evaluation of the areas [33].…”

“…The weighted sum overlay analysis can be performed with ArcGIS software. Finally, to determine the land suitability index, the following formula was used [32,34]:…”

Land use/land cover and land capability data for evaluating land utilization and official land use planning in Indramayu Regency, West Java, Indonesia

“…Indonesia is fourth most populated country in the world after China, India and the USA with the population at more than 255 million in 2015 [1,2]. One of the problem related to this high number of population is the imbalance of the population between islands.…”

Study on Determination of Categories of Soil Quality Variable Concentrations in Brackish water Ponds of Java Island, Indonesia

“…Mustafa et al (2015a) also have established category of concentration soil quality variables in pond soils in South Sulawesi where the soils is swamp land consisted of alluvial acid sulfate, peat and alluvial non-acid sulfate soils, including saline soil. The soils in Java Island, especially in northern and eastern coasts are dominated by volcanic soil (Supriyo et al, 1992;Jensen, 1993;Devnita et al, 2010;Erfandi and Rachman, 2011;Widiatmaka et al, 2016) that has specific characters; therefore the soils show particular character and different from soils outside Java Island. In addition, some studies conducted in shrimp ponds of Java island only assessed land suitability for shrimp pond (Utojo et al, 2012;Utojo et al, 2013a;Utojo et al, 2013b;Utojo et al, 2013c;Suhaemi et al, 2013;Utojo et al, 2014); spatial distribution of soil variables (Asaad and Mustafa, 2011;Kamariah et al, 2014); influence of water and soil qualities on shrimp production (Mustafa and Athirah, 2014), traditional shrimp pond management (Mustafa et al, 2015c) and feasibility of silvofishery (Tarunamulia et al, 2015).…”