Land evaluation for rain fed agriculture in the Mediterranean Peyne area, Southern France

Abstract

This thesis sets out to provide a land use recommendation report for a Mediterranean study area, with a focus on rain fed agriculture. We found that barley, grape, olive, sugar beet and wheat have a high chance of being successfully cultivated in this region as rain fed crops, while cultivation of citrus, maize, tomato and tobacco should be avoided. Crop suitability is mostly limited by availability of nutrients, moisture availability and potential soil erosion. Presently, grape, olive and wheat are the most common crop types. This study shows that barley and sugar beet form promising alternatives.

Crop suitability was assessed by performing a land evaluation, based on FAO guidelines. This procedure consists of selecting eligible Mediterranean crop types and determining their requirements in terms of climatic, soil and degradation factors. These are compared with corresponding land qualities to obtain suitability ratings. Necessary data were collected during a field campaign in 2011 in the Hérault province in Southern France, and combined with a literature study.

To allow a comparison with recommended crop types, present land use was classified using an object based approach. We selected a Landsat 7 image that corresponds with the field campaign as input. A classification rule set was developed from training data with use of a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis. Overall accuracy of the classification is 52.1%, which is mainly a result of confusion between the vineyards, bare soil and grassland classes.