Soil Fertility Assessment using Web-based Spatial Decision Support System

Abstract

Assessment of soil fertility levels is a prerequisite in developing a sustainable and productive agroecosystem. The traditional soil fertility assessment approach is costly in terms of both economy and time. The spatial data can be easily assembled, stored, displayed, and analyzed using the Geographical Information System (GIS). However, it includes finite analytical modeling approaches. Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approaches and GIS can be merged in a cooperative framework to address such limitations. In the present study, a web-GIS-based, Multicriteria Decision Support System has been proposed to assess agricultural soil fertility. The proposed framework employs the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model and various important physicochemical and nutrient contents of soil to ascertain the fertility levels of the different fields in the study area. The proposed framework recommends fertilizer requirements into the categories of low, moderate, and high levels according to the soil fertility levels. The accuracy of 85.2% reveals the effectiveness of the proposed framework.