Marjan Moazamnia

Mapping the Cultivation Potential Index (CPI) for a specific crop is a topical research activity in agro-climate studies, which can lead to environmental and water resources protection and agriculture efficiency increase. This study formulates a framework to delineate the CPI of rainfed wheat from the climatic perspective of precipitation and temperature. Four precipitation layers were prepared using the frequency analysis of annual, autumn, spring, and June precipitation time series; also, three temperature layers comprise autumn, spring, and June temperatures obtained by remote sensing techniques. The Shannon-Entropy Catastrophe Scheme (ECS) was also formulated to combine seven layers of precipitation and temperature besides the land use layer while decreasing the inherent subjectivity. The formulated methodology was implemented in the Maragheh city, northwest of Iran. Some contrasts exist between the spatial distributions of precipitation in different time scales, which necessitates the formulation of ECS as a multi-criteria decision-making technique. ECS identifies the eastern half of the study area as the medium to relatively high CPI, which can be employed as a decision support system for planning and managing agriculture.