Agricultural potential zone mapping with surface water resource management using geo-spatial tools for Jhargram district, West Bengal, India

Abstract

Regional development is an effort to improve the people’s standard of living and Socio-economic development by the fight of hard efforts against the extreme adversities of Nature. This pattern is especially noticeable among the residents of the Lateritic zone of Jhargram district in the Jungle Mahal region. The Jhargram Jungle Mahal region is composed mainly the tertiary gravel ferrous materials and older alluviums of South Western margin of West Bengal. About 40% peoples are directly engaged to agriculture system, where 30% of area depend on Monocrop production system due to the water crisis, pedogenic unevenness and not implemented of proper scientific methods for agriculture development; as a result more than 50% and ancient host people are suffering from food insecurity or scarcity also and malnutrition. Therefore, proper agricultural zone identification is more essential for this region. This investigation is applied AHP with multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods for calculating the agricultural potential zone mapping (APZM). Thus, the good potential zone is covered 166032.5 hectare in the Jhargram district and this areas percentage is 54.05%. Then the moderate area is 20857.2 hectare area and of this area’s percentage is 6.79%. And the last categories area is covered at last 8628.021 hectare area and the percentage are 2.81\%. That APZM proposed method will be used for agricultural planning and assessment purpose for regional development of the Lateritic upland area of Jhargram district.