干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The study presented and described an analysis framework for identifying suitable areas for the production of potato in China. Climate, relief, soil and land use databases were created based on GIS which was used as the major technology instrument. Relevant criteria for potato and suitability levels were defined; this information was used to obtain the criteria maps. Then a Multi-Criteria Evaluation approach and GIS were applied to obtain the suitability map for potato. The land use map was used to exclude areas from suitability maps that cannot be allowed to implement crops such as cities and towns, deserts and so on. A series of GIS models were used to identify and analyze the potential distribution for potato farming. The result clearly indicates the location and extent of potato farming areas on different suitability scales, i.e., very high suitable, high suitable, moderately suitable, low suitable, and not suitable. The suitable location that potato is of great potential to plant in northeast, northwest and southwest of China and Central China is in accordance with the distribution of practical farming areas. The created databases, mapped results, interface of expert system and relevant hardware facilities could construct a complete crop support system for potato. With the increased requirement of foods and vegetables, new adjustments according to this result in potato production spatial distribution would take into consideration socio-political and environment issues.