Incorporating future climate and soil conditions into land suitability analysis for sustainable crop production

Sustainable crop production is based on land use planning taking into consideration the level of land suitability for growing specific crops in areas under evaluation. Land Suitability Analysis (LSA) is the process of using spatial multi-criteria tools on data representing the three general categories of physical environmental factors, namely soil, climate and topography. In this work, LSA was employed to calculate current and simulate future land suitability using future climate projections, and evaluate crop residue management as a mitigation measure. The methodology was applied in Flanders (BE), which is an intensively cultivated agricultural area, with maize as the examined crop. Future climate assessment was based on CMIP5-GCM projections. The adopted Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) were RCP.4.5 and RCP8.5. Initial results indicate that the proposed methodology is a valuable tool for national and regional decision making authorities in order to plan and implement management measures that promote sustainable climate-smart agriculture.