Potential Suitable Areas Of Main Crops In Ethiopia Under The Current And The Future Climate Scenarios

We study the eastern state of Africa Ethiopia by using the main technical means Geographical Information System GIS and the Multi-Criteria Evaluation,MCE which based on the database of meteorology, topographic and soil datas. We focus on the main potential crops such as maize (Zea mays), wheat (Triticum aestivum Linn.), sorghum(Sorghum bicolor), teff (Eragrostis tef), barley(Hordeum vulgare L.), in the research area and evaluate the suitable planting regions under the current and future climate conditions. Five suitability grades, i.e.,"the best","appropriate","suitable","unsuitable" and "not suitable" are established. Furthermore, we investigate the suitable space distribution and changes under the current and future scenarios for each crop. We found:(1) Under the future climate scenario, the Ethiopia main crops suitable planting areas will be different. The suitable planting area percent of teff and barley will decrease, the maize and wheat remains nearly unchanged, but sorghum may increase.(2) These different suitable planting area change trends of different crops, under future climate scenario, are caused by their different biological characters. Teff prefers high precipitation, and barley prefers low temperature, so their planting area percentage will decrease. The preference of high temperature and the tolerance of low precipitation will increase the sorghum suitable planting area percentage. Other two crops (maize and wheat) get wide suitable range, so the planting area remains nearly unchanged.(3) For all these5crops, the suitable area percentage in the high altitude region2893-4419m will increase. The trend indicates that:the high altitude region will be more suitable for cropping in future.(4) Under the future climate scenarios, in order to facilitate to improve national food production, the country can increase the acreage of sorghum which has the increasing suitability and on the contrary, reduce the teff acreage that has lower suitability.