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Not AvailableRainfed areas currently constitute 55% of the net sown area of the country are home to twothirds of livestock and 40% of human population in the Eastern Region of India. The region has a predominance of tribal (54 tribal communities) constituting about 30% of the total population (Chauhan, 1998). It's also observed that around 62.5% of the total geographical area of Eastern Region is degraded exclusively by water induced soil erosion which in conjunction with saltaffected and acid soils works out to be 73.9%. Data on soil loss tolerance limits indicate that the tolerance (T) value varies between 7.5 and 12.5 t/ha/yr across the region (Lenka et al., 2013). Indiscriminate deforestation and practice of Jhum cultivation lead to accelerated erosion for which proper conservation measures need to be established, especially on very steep slopes.Not Availabl

Combining Fuzzy, Multicriteria and Mapping Techniques to Assess Soil Fertility for Agricultural Development: A Case Study of Firozabad District, Uttar Pradesh, India

Soil fertility (SF) assessment is an important strategy for identifying agriculturally productive lands, particularly in areas that are vulnerable to climate change. This research focuses on detecting SF zones in Firozabad district, Uttar Pradesh, India, for agricultural purposes, so that they can be prioritized for future management using the fuzzy technique in the Arc GIS model-builder. The model computing technique was also deployed to determine the different fertility zones, considering 17 soil parameters. The derived fuzzy technique outperformed the traditional method of dividing the sampling sites into clusters to correlate soil fertility classes with the studied soil samples. The prioritization of the soil factors and a spatial analysis of the fertility areas were carried out using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and GIS tools, respectively. The AHP analysis outcome indicated that hydraulic properties had the highest weighted value, followed by physical and chemical properties, regarding their influence on SF. The spatial distribution map of physico-chemical properties also clearly depicts the standard classification. A fuzzy priority map was implemented based on all the classes parameters to identify the five fertility classes of the soil, namely very high (0.05%); high (16.59%); medium (60.94%); low (22.34%); and very low (0.07% of total area). This study will be of significant value to planners and policymakers in the future planning and development of activities and schemes that aim to solve similar problems across the country