Web-Based GIS Online Consulting System with Crop-Land Suitability Identification

Transcription

1 Agricultural Information Research 17(1), Available online at Original Paper Web-Based GIS Online Consulting System with Crop-Land Suitability Identification P. K. S. C Jayasinghe* and Takemi Machida Graduate School of Agriculture, Ibaraki University, Chuou, Ami, Ibaraki , Japan Abstract Modern technologies such as Geographical Information System (GIS) would be advantageous in land suitability analysis. Distributing geospatial information on the internet is an enforcing factor for information providers. Web-based GIS technologies can be promoted to share geospatial data with farming community, plantation sector, and academic community and also it helps to make the best decision with the available information on growing crops. This concept can be successfully applied to web-based online consulting system for crop-land suitability. The purpose of this study is to develop an interactive web-based GIS online consulting system with crop-land suitability analysis, which provides information on tomato and cabbage cultivation in Kandy, Matale, Nuwaraeliya and Badulla districts of Sri Lanka. Analysis of topography factor, soil properties, and climatic factors were considered as important criteria to determine crop-land suitability. Maps for each criteria and district map of Sri Lanka were digitized by using the ArcView 9.1. District layer map of Sri Lanka was used to get the study area map. Study area map was utilized to create each spatial characteristics layers (soil, topography, rain fall, temperature, land use). Feature layers were converted to raster format. Raster layers and crop requirement factors were analyzed by GIS spatial analysis tools. Suitability maps were created under four suitability criteria, that is, highly, moderately, marginally, and not suitable. Combination of ASP, VB Script, SQL, GIS, DBMS, Map Server, and Web Server component were used to develop a flexible and user friendly online crop consultation system with web-gis tools. System facilitates to query out click area of the suitable map, would display information on the district name, suitability rank, suitability category, suitable land area, current vegetation and statistics data. This system also provides documentary consultation from field to marketing. Key words Web-based GIS, Online Consulting system, Crop-land suitability, Sri Lanka Introduction Information Communication Technology (ICT) has created a new opportunities to accelerate the transformation of traditional farming into modern agriculture (Wang 2001). Therefore it is necessary to learn the new trends of modern information technology for agriculture in the developed world and investigate appropriate ways to promote the application of new technology in to agriculture sector in developing countries. In the modern world, spatial information technologies, such as Global Positioning System (GPS), Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) has been rapidly applied to agriculture in developed countries. GIS supplies comprehensive techniques for land suitability classifications. Surface and overlay analyzing capabilities * Corresponding Author subashjp@yahoo.com of the GIS can play an important role in evolving alternate scenarios for resource development and management (Bizuwerk et al. 2005). With the development of the World Wide Web (WWW), opportunities arisen to organize various resources which can be found on the internet in an efficient and user-friendly manner. Most of the GIS applications have recently been moved from desktop to web-based. Web-based GIS technologies can be promoted to share geospatial data with farming community, plantation sector, and academic community (Jayasinghe and Machida 2007). This concept can be successfully applied to web-based consulting system for crop-land suitability. Crop-land suitability analysis can be considered as a prerequisite to achieve optimum utilization of the available land resources for sustainable agricultural production (Wang et al. 1990). Land suitability analysis for sustainable crop production involves the interpretation of data relating to soils, vegetation, topography, climate etc (FAO 1976). 13

2 Web-Based GIS Online Consulting System with Crop-Land Suitability Identification In developed countries, agriculture sector is usually Information Technology (IT) supported. Online information, consultation and land suitability maps with web-based GIS play an important role in improving and updating the knowledge of farming groups. On the other hand, there is a lack of online information in the agriculture sector in developing countries. Most of the rural areas in developing countries are information isolated. Farmers are still engaged in traditional farming with limited application of modern technologies. Furthermore, land suitability maps in web-gis environment are unavailable. Presently available land suitability maps are only in image format without any support for further or specific information. In addition, any other information about crop cultivation, statistical data, methods or technologies, etc. is available only in hard format, such as books or journals. Most of the farmers are not financially fulfilled to pay for the required information. There are some electronic documentary consultation services which are not always updated. Those services are not providing answers for specific problems that farmers face. Online consulting system for information on crop-land suitability data consider as a better solution for most of these problems. Therefore the objective of this study is to develop an interactive web-based GIS online consulting system with crop-land suitability analysis, which provides information on tomato and cabbage growing in Kandy, Matale, Nuwaraeliya and Badulla districts of Sri Lanka. This system has especially developed for farmers and other interesting parties who have little experience on IT. Methodology Suitability classification for tomato and cabbage was based on the Food and Agriculture Organization s (FAO) land suitability classification (Table 1). Soil, Climatic, and Topographic factors were taken as crop requirement criteria. Soil properties are ph, texture, drainage, organic C, CEC, and available P and climatic factors are temperature and rainfall. Elevation is used as topography parameter. GIS weighted overlay technique was used for this research in order to find suitable land. Weighted overlay analysis is one of the spatial GIS operations; it integrates spatial data with attribute data. The weighted overlay tool allows user to easily reclassify the data, weight; based on its importance and combine them to create a suitability map. Reclassify function use to bring the dataset to a common scale before doing weighted overlay analysis. Raster data are used for land suitability modeling because analysis can be performed on several raster layers at once. For example, raster data enable the user to perform a weighted overlay on several layers. Raster data provide continuous coverage of a geographic area and analysis is much more efficient. Table 2 Table 1 Classification S1 S2 S3 NS Suitability Classification Description Highly suitable Moderately suitable Marginally suitable Not suitable Tomato and Cabbage Statistics of the study area and other rest area of the country Tomato Cabbage Area/ha. Prod./M.T. Area/ha Prod./M.T Yala season Study area 2,306 21,990 (80%) 1,735 22,816 (95%) Other areas 820 5,453 (20%) 212 1,319 (5%) 2005/2006 Maha season Study area 2,351 24,923 (74%) 1,840 32,385 (92%) Other areas 1,156 8,677 (26%) 287 2,861 (8%) Source: Statistics Department of Sri Lanka. Overview of Study Area The study area of this research is Kandy, Matale, Nuwaraeliya and Badulla districts in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is a tropical island located in Indian Ocean, next to the southern tip of India, between 5 55' and 9 50' to the North and 79 42' and 81 53' to the East. Land area of the study area is 8,535 km 2 (853,500 ha.). Sri Lanka has three main climatic zones. They are wet zone, dry zone and intermediate zone. Most of the lands of study area belong to wet and intermediate zones. Growing seasons are not determined by change of temperature, but by influenced of two monsoons rainfall. The north-east monsoon in November to February is locally called Maha season and the south-west monsoon from May to September Yala season. Although vegetable grow thought the year with help of other rainfall (cyclonic) and irrigations. This is the major vegetable growing area of the country (Table 2). Most Sri Lankans live in rural areas. The urban population (21.5%) is mainly concentrated in greater Colombo and five other cities. But 70% of Sri Lanka s population lives in the south-western economically and climatically favoured province, on only 30% of the country s land; the dry zone accounts for 60% of the land, but has only 20% of the population. Population density per square kilometer was 310 in 2004 (Central Bank of Sri Lanka 2004). Climatic condition of Sri Lanka is suitable for growing crops with wide diversity. Vegetable sector in Sri Lanka provides important contribution for the development of rural economy. The majority of the population involved in agriculture sector and most of them are small producers or home garden suppliers. Considering the limited land resources in Sri Lanka, identifying suitable lands would be one of the key factors to increase the vegetable production of the country. 14

3 Agricultural Information Research 17(1), 2008 Table 3 Crops requirements criteria for Tomato Soil Properties 1 (Highly ) 2 (Moderately ) Ranks 3 (Marginally ) 4 (Not ) Soil ph >5.8 and <7.5 >7.5 and <8 >8 and <9 Other values Texture Sandy clay loam/ Sandy loam/ Clay loam Loamy sand/ sandy clay Clay/ Sand loam Drainage Well drainage Moderately drainage Poor drainage Very poor drainage Organic C (%) >5 >3 and <5 >2 and <3 <2 CEC (cmol c kg 1 ) >15 >10 and <15 >5 and <10 <5 Available P (ppm) >15 >10 and <15 >5 and <10 <5 Elevation (m) >1000 and <2500 >2500 and <3000 >3000 and <3500 other values Temperature ( C) >18 and <24 >24 and <25 >25 and <26 Others values Rainfall (mm) >1500 and <2000 >1000 and <1500 >2000 and <2500 >2500 Table 4 Crops requirements criteria for Cabbage Soil Properties 1 (Highly ) 2 (Moderately ) Ranks 3 (Marginally ) 4 (Not ) Soil ph >6 and <7 >7 and <8 >8 and <9 Other values Texture Sandy clay loam/ Clay loam Loamy sand/sandy Clay/Sand Sandy loam/loam clay Drainage Well drainage Moderately drainage Poor drainage Very poor drainage Organic C (%) >5 >3 and <5 >2 and <3 <2 CEC (cmol c kg 1 ) >15 >10 and <15 >5 and <10 <5 Available P (ppm) >15 >10 and <15 >5 and <10 <5 Elevation (m) >800 and <3500 >600 and <800 >400 and <600 other values Temperature ( C) >15 and <20 >20 and <21 >21 and <22 Others values Rainfall (mm) >2000 and <4000 >1500 and <2000 >4000 and <4500 Others values Data Source Average annual rainfall ( data), average annual temperature ( data), topography (IRI, New York 2006), Soil (Panabokke 1996), land use (UDA, Sri Lanka 2007) and District maps of Sri Lanka were used for the study. Crop requirements criteria collected from literature review, regional experience and from the Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka (Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka 2006) (Table 3 and 4). Soil map of Sri Lanka and soil properties of study area (Senarath and Dassayayake 1999a, 1999b, Dassanayake and Hettiarachchi 1999, Dassanayake et al. 2005, De Silva et al. 2005, Dassanayake and De Silva 2005, Panabooke 1996) were used to create maps for each soil properties. Method The paper maps on above mentioned factors were scanned and screen digitized to prepare thematic layers with the help of Arc- View 9.1. District layer map of Sri Lanka was used to get the study area map. Study area map were utilized to create each spatial characteristics maps (soil, topography, rain fall, temperature, land use) using clip command in Arc tools. Soil properties layers were derived by soil layer. Water bodies, Tea, Rubber, Coconuts, Dense forest in the land use layer and Lithosols, erosional remnants and rocky area in the soil layer were assigned as restricted area for the analysis. Soil properties of each soil types were considered as homogenous throughout the soil profile. Created thematic layers were integrated in to raster base format. Reclassify function was done for all the layers according to the given rank. After that, weighed overlay function was performed over the reclassified values to combines the input raster layers, which were weighted based on its importance and added together to produce an output raster layer. Finally, created suitability maps were identified by its ranks with four suitability categories namely, highly suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable and not suitable. The results were analyzed by Microsoft Excel and raster files were reconverted to a feature file again. Land suitability map for each district was created by using above feature files. A web-based GIS online consulting system was developed to facilitate searching suitable land area and statistical summaries in district wise and allowing to find information on tomato and cabbage from field to marketing, based on a client-side ActiveX control and a combination of Microsoft Windows Sever 2003 R2, Server side scripts (ASP.Net, ASP 3.0, C# and VB Script), Microsoft Access 2003 (DBMS), GIS (ArcView 9.1), Web-GIS 15

4 Web-Based GIS Online Consulting System with Crop-Land Suitability Identification Fig. 1 System Architecture Fig. 2 Land Suitability maps Map Server (UMN Map Server for windows- MS4W) and Web Server software (Microsoft Internet Information Server, IIS V6.0) on the server-side (Fig. 1). Results Land suitability for tomato and cabbage are determined based on soil properties, climatic, topographic and current land use factors. Suitability class ratings were considered as highly suitable to not suitable. In the study area, 426,406 ha (49.96%) lands were considered as restricted area for the analysis. The results of the land suitability analysis are shown in fig. 2 and table 5 with suitability maps. Tomato Cabbage Table 5 Highly 5,550 (0.65%) 17,470 (2.05%) Results of Land Suitability Assessment Moderately 371,288 (43.50%) 360,087 (42.19%) Marginally 50,255 (5.89%) 48,804 (5.72%) Not 0 (0.00%) 713 (0.08%) The majority of land was under moderately suitable (371,300 ha for tomato and 360,100 ha for cabbage) according to the given criteria for both crops. However there was no at least 5 ha land parcel under highly suitable category for both crops. It is reveal that not suitable land parcels were not available for tomato. 16

5 Agricultural Information Research 17(1), 2008 Discussion This study used the available spatial information for the identification of suitable area for tomato and cabbage crop in the major vegetable growing area of the country. Online consultation services are new solution for farmers to solve their specific problem quickly. Web-based GIS online consulting system was developed with GIS application for information on crop-land suitability. Web-based GIS online consulting system with crop land suitability can be considered as great support for farmers and other interesting parties for decision making or as a source of information. The GIS and internet technologies can be efficiently combined as a mechanism to share crop-land information freely and openly. Online Consulting Services Online services provide an infrastructure in which users can communicate with others, either by exchanging message or participating in online conferences, such as chat or forums. Most of online services are required to be a subscriber before access the services. Without being subscriber, these online consulting services let users access, as the services are on non-profit basis. Web application provides three types of user friendly online consultation services namely, Live Web Chat, Consulting forum and E- request form. Delay of advisory services is one of the considerable issues that farmers face, which makes them unable to get quick solution for their problems. They have been forced to wait for the adviser to visit their field or to go to regional agricultural office by themselves, which may probably be far away from the farm. Live web chat allows users to have advices same time from a professional adviser. When the user is probing a problem and does not know what information is needed, the specialist begins a dialogue with the user to frame the problem and specify the request. The adviser is always logging on the system in the day time. System allows chatting maximum ten users at the same time. Live web chat is desirable solution for rural farmers to resolve there problem quickly. Typically, farmers have practical knowledge on their farming methods, But there is no an alternative services to share information and knowledge with others. The forum is a good arrangement to gather such a diverse range of people with many different ideas about farming. The objective of the Consulting forum is to discuss with parties on new ideas, common problems etc. In order to use this forum, user s address is not required. System facilitates user to perceive the previous discussions and as well as upload their comments for specific problems. Consulting forum might be a great help for less knowladge farmers to improving farming practices, and to see better farmers push their own boundaries and do really well. Most of the farmers are in the field on day time, Sometimes if they have a problem; it is rather difficulty to access live web chats or consulting forum for consultation as they are often in field.therefore, they can write the problem when they have free time like night. This kind of farmers can use E-request form to upload their questions at any time. One of the main feature of E-request form is, assures secrecy of the user if need. The reply would be received by or post mail depending on their preference (Fig. 3). Web-based GIS System As a web-based GIS system, users can access geographical information through internet using popular internet browser. Web server communicates with internet map server. Internet map server retrieves geographical information from spatial database and transform into appropriate format before sending the data to a web server. A web-based GIS system is based on client server architecture. A thin client approach where most of the processing work is done on demand in the server and client does not do any task other than to display the data on screen. Client will not need a powerful machine to access the services offered. Map Server MapServer has been developed to provide spatial locations for growing tomato and cabbage with a suitability ranking from highly suitable to not suitable. User can view the areas on the basis of districts wise. MapServer, which is considered as the world s leading open source web mapping tool, is used as the map server and developed by the University of Minnesota. MapServer is a web application server that can be deployed over the internet using open source libraries such as Shapelib (This is a free C library use to read and write ESRI Shape file format), Free Type (font engine) and GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library). The MapServer system includes map script that allows running popular scripting languages such as PHP, Perl, ASP.Net, and Java to access the MapServer C API. The MapServer CGI is called mapserv which is an interface that handles input and directs image creation or query request. MapServer complies with OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) WMS (Web Mapping Service) and WFS (Web Feature Service) specification. Access to MapServer web services is primarily through a CGI interface but HTTP POST commands are also supported. The main feature of MapServer is that users are not required to install any other additional tools to view maps than a standard web browser. Therefore, it is easy for farmers to access MapServer even if they have only a little IT experience. GIS data are given in standard file format.shape and the structure of the map is given by native file format.map, which is used by MapServer, to communicate with the web browser. Clicking a certain area of the map would display information on the district name, suitabil- 17

6 Web-Based GIS Online Consulting System with Crop-Land Suitability Identification Fig. 3 Front page of the web application Fig. 4 Displaying suitability map of Cabbage by Web-GIS server ity category, suitability land area, general weather conditions, current vegetation and last year statistics. This application helps to make the best decision with the available information on growing crops. Therefore this system can be interpreted as a decision making system for farmers and other interesting parties (Fig. 4). 18

7 Agricultural Information Research 17(1), 2008 Crop Consultation Documents Web system has another facility to provide documentary consultation, which are available from field to marketing. Information is provided in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) format with the latest technologies for growing tomato and cabbage. Statistical Data Statistics data, which are obtained from Department of Census and Statistic, Sri Lanka, are stored in the database. In order to view data, user will need to select all the information such as the district name, year, the growing season, and the name of the crop. Then the result will be displayed in a table. Furthermore user will be able to view the statistical data as a spatial query result in the map server. Conclusions Lack of IT experience prevents farmers from getting electronic information. But this application has attempted to provide user friendly system which helps such farmer to access information and retrieve data without any difficulty. This application has utilized most of the open source components and thus can be considered as a low cost application which will be suited for developing country. This consulting system is basically aimed at farmers in Sri Lanka with little knowledge on IT. Sri Lanka government has launched a project called e-sri Lanka and under this project it is planned to establish IT centers in rural area. Therefore this system will be practically helpful to rural farmers of Sri Lanka ( References Bizuwerk, A., D. Peden, G. Taddese, et al. (2005) GIS Application for analysis of land suitability and determination of grazing pressure in upland of the Awash River basin, Ethiopia, Ethiopian Veterinary Journal, 10(1): Central Bank of Sri Lanka (2004) Annual Report on Recent economic development, Colombo, Sri Lanka, pp. 3. Dassanayake, A. R., L. S. K. Hettiarachchi (1999) Soils of the Up County wet zone. In: Mapa, R. B., S. Somasiri, S. Nagarajah, (Eds.), Soils of the wet zone of Sri Lanka. Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, pp Dassanayake, A. R., L. L. W. Somasiri, G. G. R. De Silva (2005) Soils of the low country Intermediate zone. In: Mapa, R. B., A. R. Dassanayake, H. B. Nayakekorale, (Eds.), Soils of the Intermediate zone of Sri Lanka. Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, pp Dassanayake, A. R., G. G. R. De Silva (2005) Soils of the up country Intermediate zone. In: Mapa, R. B., A. R. Dassanayake, H. B. Nayakekorale, (Eds.), Soils of the Intermediate zone of Sri Lanka. Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, pp Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka (2006) Agriculture Technologies, < browsed on September 12, De Silva, G. G. R., A. R. Dassanayake, R. B. Mapa (2005) Soils of the mid country Intermediate zone. In: Mapa, R. B., A. R.Dassanayake, H. B. Nayakekorale, (Eds.), Soils of the Intermediate zone of Sri Lanka. Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, pp Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, Rome) (1976) A frame work for land evaluation, Soils Bulletin No. 32. International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI, New York) (2006) Climate predictions and applications for Sri Lanka, < iri.columbia.edu/~mahaweli/>, browsed on May 22, Jaysinghe, P. K. S. C., T. Machida (2007) Web-Based GIS Consulting Portal with Crop-Land Suitability. EFITA/WCCA 2007, ISBN Panabokke, C. R (1996) Soils and Agro-Ecological Environments of Sri Lanka, Natural Resource series No. 2. Natural Resources, Energy and Science Authority of Sri Lanka, Colombo, pp Senarath, A., A. R.Dassanayake (1999a) Soils of the low country wet zone. In: Mapa, R. B., Somasiri, S., Nagarajah, S. (Eds.), Soils of the wet zone of Sri Lanka. Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, pp Senarath, A., A. R. Dassanayake (1999b) Soils of the mid country wet zone. In: Mapa, R. B., S. Somasiri, S. Nagarajah, (Eds.), Soils of the wet zone of Sri Lanka. Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, pp Urban Development Authority, Sri Lanka (UDA) (2007) land use map, < browsed on March 10, Wang, F., Hall, G. B., Subaryono (1990) Fuzzy information representation and processing in conventional GIS software: Database design and applications. Int. j1.geographical Information Systems 4, Wang, M (2001) Possible adoption of precision agriculture for developing countries at the threshold of the new millennium, Computer and Electronics in Agriculture, 30 (2001): Received October 1, 2007 Accepted November 29, 2007 Production and management information 19