Methods for Generating Land Suitability Maps: A Comparative Evaluation

Abstract

Land resource inventories to determine land suitabilities have become a standard part of planning analysis at many scales. Any attempt to review, compare, evaluate, or improve upon the myriad of case studies, many only partially documented and in limited circulation, suffers from the lack of reference to a common framework. This article develops a general statement of the purpose and character of land suitability analysis, a taxonomy of existing methods for identifying homogeneous areas and rating them as to suitability for specific uses, and a comparative evaluation of these methods.