Development of Decision Support System

and land evaluation tools for the optimal

land uses for the soils of Tamil Nadu
By

Dr. K. Manikandan
Dr. J. Prabhaharan
Dr. K. Baskar
25 September 2015
Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

Rationale
No user friendly, open source database on soil
Least attention on land evaluation due to arduous
methodology
Necessitates certain tools to ease this
Less knowledge on alternate crop selection based on
soil and climate
Need DSS for suitable alternate crop selection

Need for large scale accessible soil information for

varied users
Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

Objectives
To develop a user friendly digital soil database for
Tamil Nadu
To design a GIS module for land evaluation
To provide a DSS for predicting crop suitability for
soils of Tamil Nadu
To develop a comprehensive website by combining all
the above modules

Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

Methodology
Nature of Project

Applied research : 70 %
Basic research : 30 %
Study area

Tamil Nadu
Village as base unit
Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

Data required
Village level vector layer of Tamil Nadu
SOI, Dehradun
Digital soil map of Tamil Nadu
NBSSLUP, Nagpur
Block level climatological data for Tamil Nadu
IMD, Pune / TNAU, Coimbatore

Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

Methodology
Development of digital database on soil

Soil map of Tamil Nadu

Overlay of village vector layer of Tamil Nadu
Union of both layers
Export of united data
Design and programming in VB.net
Development of database

Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

Methodology
Designing land evaluation module
LCC and LIC : considered for this study
Criteria for LCC and LIC : defined

Programming: correlating soil information with

LCC and LIC criteria
Evaluation and module development

Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

Methodology
Development of DSS for prediction of ideal crop suitability

Major field, oil seed, vegetables and selected

horticultural and commercial crops considered

Criteria for crop suitability development

Programme for correlating suitability criteria with soil
and climatic data sets
Evaluation of results
Development of module on DSS
Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

Methodology
Development of comprehensive website

Website with provision for

Soil database
LCC and LIC prediction module
DSS for crop suitability
Facilitates ease information dissemination and
awareness generation

Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

Expected outputs
Database on soil and climate for Tamil Nadu
Software module for LCC and LIC determination

DSS for crop suitability for soils of Tamil Nadu

Comprehensive website with all above information

Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai

10

Budget proposed
S.
No

Head

Ist year

IInd Year IIIrd Year

1. Salaries and wages (2 8,04,000 8,04,000 8,04,000

SRF, 1 JRF and 1
Technical Assistant
2. Computer and
5,00,000
software (GIS)
3. Consumables
6,00,000 1,00,000 1,00,000
4. Travel
50,000
50,000
50,000
5. Miscellaneous /
25,000
25,000
25,000
Contingency
7. Overhead Costs (@ 20% of project cost)

Total
24,12,000

5,00,000
8,00,000
1,50,000
75,000
7,87,400

Total 47,24,000

Department of Soils and Environment, AC & RI, Madurai