Rainwater harvesting for agriculture development using multi-influence factor and fuzzy overlay techniques

Rainwater harvesting (RWH) is an essential technique for enhancing agricultural development, particularly in regions facing water scarcity or unreliable rainfall patterns. Water shortage, however, is one of the key causes of low crop production especially in mountainous regions like the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where most rainwater is lost by runoff. Therefore, rainwater harvesting could be a suitable to make better use of runoff and increase crop production. The study focuses on selecting suitable rainwater harvesting sites in District Karak to enhance agriculture by utilizing multi-influence factor (MIF) and fuzzy overlay techniques. We considered seven factors, i.e., land use land cover (LULC), slope, geology, soil, rainfall, lineament, drainage density, to create a ranking system to understand its application in site selection analysis. The results were combined into one overlay process to produce a rainwater harvesting suitability map. The weighted overlay analysis of the MIF model results reveals that 167.96 km² area has a very high potential for rainwater harvesting, 874.17 km² has a high potential, 1182.92 km² has a moderate and 354.50 km² has a poor potential for rainwater harvesting. The fuzzy overlay analysis revealed that 257.53 km² has a very high potential for rainwater harvesting, 896.56 km² area is classified as high, 1018.30 km² moderate, and 407.7 km² has poor potential for rainwater harvesting. The findings of this research work will help the policymakers and decision-makers construct various rainwater harvesting structures in the study area to overcome the water shortage problems.