Digital mapping and spatial variability of soil quality ındex for desertification in the Akarçay Basin under the semi-arid terrestrial ecosystem using neutrosophic fuzzy-AHP approach

Soil is a vital resource for the terrestrial ecosystem. Soil is a non-renewable natural resource on human time scales with its vulnerability to desertification and degradation relying on sophisticated interactions among factors, processes, and causes committing at a range of spatial and temporal scales. One of the major factors and widely considered in the desertification and degradation is the soil quality index. The basic purpose of this study is to assess soil quality index (SQI) related to desertification and degradation in the Akarçay Basin in Turkey falling within semi-arid terrestrial ecosystem using multi-criteria decision analysis associated with various geostatistical models and GIS techniques by taking into account nine soil criteria from the Desertification Model of Turkey (DTM), which was considered as the base for the current study. To determine weighting score for each criterion, Neutrosophic Fuzzy-AHP model was used to create sufficiently sensitive levels of significance of the criteria. Obtained results classified more than 22% of the total area of about 1766 km2 as low and very low quality, while only approx. 62% of the basin’ soil were classified as high and very high quality by the SQI regard to desertification risk.