A Comparison of Approaches to Regional Land-Use Capability Analysis for Agricultural Land-Planning

Tara A. Ippolito, Jeffrey E. Herrick, Ekwe L. Dossa, Maman Garba, Mamadou Ouattara, Upendra Singh, Zachary P. Stewart, P. V. Vara Prasad, Idrissa A. Oumarou and Jason C. Neff
Additional contact information
Tara A. Ippolito: The Sustainability Innovation Laboratory at Colorado, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
Jeffrey E. Herrick: Jornada Experimental Range, United States Department of Agriculture—Agricultural Research Service, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA
Ekwe L. Dossa: International Fertilizer Development Center, Cotonou 04 BP 673, Benin
Maman Garba: Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique du Niger (INRAN), Niamey BP 429, Niger
Mamadou Ouattara: Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique du Niger (INRAN), Niamey BP 429, Niger
Upendra Singh: International Fertilizer Development Center, Muscle Shoals, AL 35661, USA
Zachary P. Stewart: Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
P. V. Vara Prasad: Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
Idrissa A. Oumarou: Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique du Niger (INRAN), Niamey BP 429, Niger
Jason C. Neff: The Sustainability Innovation Laboratory at Colorado, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 5, 1-23

Abstract: Smallholder agriculture is a major source of income and food for developing nations. With more frequent drought and increasing scarcity of arable land, more accurate land-use planning tools are needed to allocate land resources to support regional agricultural activity. To address this need, we created Land Capability Classification (LCC) system maps using data from two digital soil maps, which were compared with measurements from 1305 field sites in the Dosso region of Niger. Based on these, we developed 250 m gridded maps of LCC values across the region. Across the region, land is severely limited for agricultural use because of low available water-holding capacity (AWC) that limits dry season agricultural potential, especially without irrigation, and requires more frequent irrigation where supplemental water is available. If the AWC limitation is removed in the LCC algorithm (i.e., simulating the use of sufficient irrigation or a much higher and more evenly distributed rainfall), the dominant limitations become less severe and more spatially varied. Finally, we used additional soil fertility data from the field samples to illustrate the value of collecting contemporary data for dynamic soil properties that are critical for crop production, including soil organic carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen.

Keywords: land capability classification; drought; land degradation; vulnerability; agriculture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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