Biophysical land planning aims to choose the land uses according to soil suitability, contributing to integrated and economically sustainable land use. Suitability is a measure of how well the qualities of a land unit match the requirements of a particular form of land use. The process of land suitability classification is the evaluation and grouping of specific land areas in terms of their suitability for a defined benefit. In this chapter, the authors intended to determine the different levels of suitability for land use in the subregion of Beira Baixa, located in the center of Portugal, near the border with Spain. To this effect, the authors present a land suitability model based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) that incorporates a set of climate, soil, and topographic variables. Implementing this spatial data analysis approach could be valuable for stakeholders in land use planning and management.
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Agroforestry management aims to choose the land uses according to soil suitability, contributing to integrated and economically sustainable land use. The unprecedented expansion of the human need for resources requires an approach to decisions regarding land use that would ensure the maintenance of biodiversity and sustainable natural resource utilization for the continued delivery of ecosystem services.
According to FAO (1976), suitability is a measure of how well the qualities of a land unit match the requirements of a particular form of land use. The process of land suitability classification is the evaluation and grouping of specific land areas in terms of their suitability for a defined use.
The concept of sustainable agriculture indicates that it is necessary to promote the responsible use of resources, such as water and nutrients, and decrease the use of pesticides in a way that considers future needs and will not compromise the quality of the environment. This indicates that it is essential to respect the agroclimatic conditions and identify and promote the appropriate crop adaptation strategies, especially in semiarid Mediterranean areas, where water is the most limiting natural resource (Schaldach et al., 2021). According to the strategy of the Council of the Union on the European Innovation Partnership for Agricultural productivity and Sustainability (EIP-AGRI Focus Group, 2021), it is necessary to promote more sustainable use of natural resources and implement a competitive and sustainable production of food within a global compromise to reduce the impact on climate change.
The land use planning of agroforestry spaces is necessary for the various stakeholders to use them according to their suitability, contributing to their integrated and economically sustainable use. Considering that the natural aptitude of the territory for a given use results from the combination of factors related to the intrinsic capacity of that territory about environmental factors, with the potentialities that come from the transformation of the territory by man.
Site suitability assessment is inherently a multicriteria problem. That is, land suitability analysis is an evaluation/decision problem involving several factors. In general, a generic model of site/land suitability can be described as:
S = f (x1, x2,… xn) (1)
Where S = suitability measure; x1., x2, …, xn = are the factors affecting the suitability of the site/land.
Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) deals with complex decisions involving a large amount of information, several alternative outcomes, and multiple criteria to assess these outcomes. MCDA techniques can identify a single preferred option, rank options, shortlist several options for further investigation, or simply distinguish acceptable from unacceptable alternatives (Collins et al., 2001; Malczewski, 2004). Thus, multicriteria evaluation solves spatial decision problems derived from multiple criteria. By integrating the evaluation techniques with GIS, the influential factors are evaluated, and more accurate decisions can be made (Parimala & Lopez, 2012).
Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been widely applied in various studies in different fields, many of which have been published and cited by many authors as processes of relevant decision-making. Various techniques of MCDA have been used extensively in land use suitability for agricultural crops (Alkimim, Sparovek, & Clarke, 2015; Dedeoğlu & Dengiz, 2019; Elaalem, Comber, & Fisher, 2011; Zhang, Su, Wu, & Liang, 2015). While many MCDA applications do not incorporate a spatial dimension to the analysis, MCDA lends itself well to GIS, and the use of GIS within an MCDA framework is common (Malczewski, 2006; Malczewski & Rinner, 2015), particularly in forestry and agriculture (Wotlolan et al., 2021; Quinta-Nova & Ferreira, 2020; Quinta-Nova & Roque, 2018).