Utility of satellite data for land evaluation in land use planning for a part of Northern Karnataka

The study reported herein deals with the utility of satellite remote sensing techniques for land evaluation for agricultural land use planning. False colour composite of Landsat imagery in the scale of 1:250,000 was visually interpreted for physiography that formed the base for mapping soil and land resources in the field. The small-scale soil map thus prepared has thirteen map units with association of soil families. Soil and land resource units shown on these small-scale maps were evaluated for their suitability for growing sorghum crop by matching the relevant land qualities against the land requirements for sorghum. The land evaluation carried out for growing sorghum crop in the study area revealed that about 38.6 per cent is highly suitable (S1), 31.5 per cent moderately suitable (S2) and 24.5 per cent marginally suitable (S3). An area of about 5.4 per cent is not suitable, of which 3.0 per cent is currently not suitable (N1) and 2.4 per cent permanently not suitable for growing sorghum crop.