Application of multivariate approach in agrometeorological suitability zonation at northeast semiarid plains of Iran

摘要

At the present study, factor and cluster analysis were applied to evaluate the agrometeorological suitability zonation of 39 plains in Khorasan Razavi Province, NE Iran. For this purpose, the extracted 98 variables were processed, resulted in eight factors which explain about 90 % of the total variance. The explained variances of these factors are varied from 42.99 to 2.74 % for factors 1 and 8 after the Varimax rotation, respectively. The spatial classification maps of factor scores are extracted after the studied plains and the calculated scores were then classified by cluster analysis. It was revealed that five clusters were enough to classify the studied plains. The "negligible," "low," "moderate," "high," and 'Very high" classes included 4, 14,9, 7, and 5 plains with 8.0,35.6, 23.0, 15.1, and 18.3 % of the total surface area, respectively. The geographical distribution of the five major zones revealed that the plains with very high suitability are laid on the center and north parts of the study area, while the rest which are negligible and low suitability zones are mainly concentrated in the west, south, and southeast of the study area. Comparing the agrometeorological suitability between the corresponding zones revealed a general reducing trend from north to south along 3° geographical latitudes.