DROUGHT MANAGEMENT MODEL SUGGESTION FOR THE SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION. SILIVRI REGION

Abstract

The earth zone will come into intensive and long-term dry periods. It is essential to take precautions mainly for providing continuous food production and saving and planning water supplies against this natural disaster which impacts will rapidly increase in the near future. In this project, a model has been proposed which will provide the optimum water consumption and continuous agricultural production. The Silivri district was chosen as study area because it has got the highest agricultural potential in the province of Istanbul. All data which have been carried by 1:25 000 scaled soil map, air photos, satellite images and fieldworks are stored in a GIS database. Through the quarries in terms of topoghraphical database and physical and chemical soil characteristics, land use suitability classes (LUSC) have been determined and mapped. Further water-holding capacity of the agricultural land was determined according to the soil texture. Also the existent agricultural crops in the region and the new proposed agricultural crops, which can be able to adapt to changing conditions, have been listed. Consequently an agricultural crop pattern has been designed for the Silivri region against the drought periods by means of water-holding capacity of soil, annual water consumption of plants and LUSC.