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Feasibility of fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and fuzzy TOPSIS methods to assess the most sensitive soil attributes against land use change

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Abstract

The increase in demand for more food production due to the population growth has caused land efficiency and sustainable soil management to be taken into consideration. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique ranks the management alternatives via handling various data. The aim of this study was to determine efficient criteria and sub-criteria among the 16 soil properties in cropland, rangeland, and forestland based on the pair-wise comparison, weighting, and computing the influence percentage through fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and fuzzy TOPSIS and comparing their outcomes. Furthermore, the gap degree was calculated to understand which alternative and to what extent should be changed and improved to achieve the goal in the best way. The Best Non-fuzzy Performance Value (BNP) with the center of area (COA) method was applied to estimate the criterion weight. According to the final weights of criteria in cropland, it can be seen that the chemical attribute was preferred, since it had the highest weight (0.459), followed by the nutritional (0.332) and physical (0.209) properties; whereas, the most important criterion in rangeland and forestland was related to the physical property (weight = 0.76). The highest gap degree was obtained for bulk density (BD) (0.868), pH (0.567), and nitrogen (N) (0.845), respectively. The larger the gap degree, the more preferred the alternative. According to the computed relative closeness coefficient (RCCi), soil N and BD carried the highest priority. Application of FAHP to identify the most significant factor, which has critical effects on land sustainable management, also evaluation of environmental performance especially associated with soil properties in different land uses are very important due to guide decision-maker on picking FAHP model in considering and ranking decision criteria used in land use management.

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Data Availability

Data will be available based on request.

Abbreviations

A1 :

Cropland

A2 :

Rangeland

A3 :

Forestland

Aij :

Matrix pair-wise components

AHP:

Analytic hierarchy process

BD:

Bulk density

BNP:

Best Non-fuzzy performance values

C1 :

Soil physical properties

C2 :

Soil chemical properties

C3 :

Soil nutritional properties

CCi :

Closeness coefficient or fuzzy gap degree

CCE:

Calcium carbonate equivalent

CEC:

Cation exchange capacity

CI:

Consistency index

COA:

Center of area

CR:

Consistency ratio

Cu:

DTPA- extractable copper

d * i :

The shortest interval from the positive ideal solution

d ─ i :

The largest interval from the negative ideal solution

dv :

The distance between two fuzzy numbers

EC:

Electrical conductivity of soil saturated extract

FAHP:

Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process

Fe:

DTPA- extractable iron

FNIS:

Fuzzy negative-ideal solution

FPIS:

Fuzzy positive-ideal solution

FTOPSIS:

Fuzzy technique for order preference by similarities to ideal solution

l ij :

The minimum possible value of a fuzzy number ãij = (lij, mij, uij)

\(l\tilde{w}_{i}\) :

The lower value of the fuzzy weight of the ith criterion

MCDM:

Multi-criteria decision-making

m ij :

The most likely possible value of a fuzzy number ãij = (lij, mij, uij)

MMULT:

Matrix multiplication

Mn:

DTPA- extractable manganese

\(m\tilde{w}_{i}\) :

The middle value of the fuzzy weight of the ith criterion

n :

Dimension of the matrix

N:

Total Nitrogen

OC:

Organic carbon

OM:

Organic matter

P:

NaHCO3-extractable phosphorous

pH:

PH of saturated soil paste

RCCi :

Relative closeness coefficient

\(\tilde{r}_{i}\) :

The geometric mean of fuzzy comparison values

RI:

Random indices

RIg :

Random indices according to the middle matrix

RIm :

Random indices according to the geometric mean matrix

u ij :

The maximum possible value of a fuzzy number ãij = (lij, mij, uij)

\(u\tilde{w}_{i}\) :

The upper value of the fuzzy weight of the ith criterion

w ij :

Fuzzy weight

\(\tilde{w}_{i}\) :

The fuzzy weight of the ith criterion

w g :

Weights calculated by the geometric matrices of triangular numbers

w m :

Weights calculated by the middle matrices of triangular numbers

Zn:

DTPA- extractable zinc

ϴv :

Water content by volume

λ :

Eigenvalue for each matrix

λ max :

Maximum eigenvalue for each matrix

\(\mu_{A} \left( {\tilde{a}_{ij} } \right)\) :

Membership function for a fuzzy number (ãij)

\(\otimes\) :

Fuzzy multiplication operation

\(\oplus\) :

Fuzzy addition operation

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to appreciate Fasa University for the supports.

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This work was supported by the Fasa University.

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  1. Department of Range and Watershed Management (Nature Engineering), Faculty of Agriculture, Fasa University, Fasa, Islamic Republic of Iran

    Maryam Zahedifar

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Zahedifar, M. Feasibility of fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and fuzzy TOPSIS methods to assess the most sensitive soil attributes against land use change. Environ Earth Sci 82, 248 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-023-10934-y

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