Abstract

PALACIOS OREJUELA, Iván; USHINA, Dennis  and  CARRERA VILLACRES, David. GIS techniques to cangahuosos soil recovery, for community agriculture purposes in the ilaló. Cienc. suelo [online]. 2020, vol.38, n.2, pp.295-309. ISSN 1850-2067.

The rugged topography of the Ecuadorian Andean region, in addition, to inadequate agricultural practices and deforestation have caused soil erosion on the foothills of the Ilaló volcano. The problem is more complicated by the presence of cangahua, which increases soil degradation. The objective of the present work was to apply and compare different GIS techniques of spatial modeling for the selection of suitable areas for recovering soils eroded by cangahuas, in order to optimize economic resources and promote community agriculture development, with a case for study in the Ilaló volcano. The variables as rivers, roads, slope, populated area, forest and cangahua coverage, were used in three different techniques: Boolean intersection (BIM), ordered weighted average (OWA) and weighted linear combination (WLC), added to analytical hierarchy processes, Fuzzy, and Cramer’s V that served to improve the results. The global accuracies obtained from each of the applied techniques were determined using confusion matrices, where WLC was the method that achieved the best results, followed by OWA and BIM. Four optimal zones per community were identified, which were socialized to their inhabitants. Finally, 16 samples were built to check a thickness of cangahua of at least 60 cm that guarantees the breaking of the soil with heavy machinery and the proper development of crops. The use of GIS techniques allowed to improve resources, improving planning and decision-making, which fostered the interest of the inhabitants in this project that will allow the reuse of degraded soils with cangahuas, transforming them into fertile soils suitable for the region’s own crops, it avoids the abandonment of the lands, and it will improve the quality of the environment and drives the productive reactivation of the population.

Keywords : Erosion; Fuzzy; spatial modeling; Ecuador.