Land capability assessment of Sali watershed for agricultural suitability using a multi-criteria-based decision-making approach.

The assessment of land's agricultural potential, through a land capability evaluation, delves into its innate limitations, crop suitability, and responses to soil management. In regions where agriculture reigns supreme, socio-economic development is inexorably linked to the agricultural sector, making the optimal utilization of land resources an imperative pursuit. The pursuit of this objective is underpinned by the selection of new agricultural areas and the determination of which crops thrive in specific locations, for which the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method emerges as an ideal choice. This comprehensive research endeavour revolves around the intricate interplay of climatic, edaphic, fertility, topographical, and socioeconomic determinants. Within this intricate web, a total of 15 determinants play a pivotal role, including precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET), soil texture, drainage, soil organic-carbon, nitrogen content, pH, clay content, river proximity, land use/land cover (LULC), slope, temperature, social suitability, irrigation density, and elevation. To weigh these determinants, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) comes into play, ultimately revealing that the dominant influences on land capability stem from the realms of climate and soil. The watershed's terrain analysis revealed a distinct suitability contrast: 168 km highly suitable, 181.3 km moderate, and 429 km2 low. The eastern and northeastern sectors were notably promising. Rigorous validation, using the ROC curve, confirmed the reliability and precision. The process yielded an impressive 83.2% AUC, unequivocally confirming the assessment's remarkable accuracy and dependability.