چارچوب یکپارچه آمایش اقلیمی کشاورزی: از ارزیابی شرایط اقلیمی تا تعیین سامانه بهره‌برداری مناسب

Land-use planning requires an understanding of environmental capacities and constraints and the alignment of human activities with land capabilities. Climate is one of the fundamental components determining agricultural suitability; however, in many land-use planning frameworks, it is incorporated primarily as a set of individual variables alongside other environmental components. Agricultural climate classifications, although providing a general representation of thermal and moisture conditions, do not necessarily capture within-class variability or directly translate climatic characteristics into a decision-oriented output for agricultural land-use planning. This study aims to develop an independent framework for agricultural climate zoning in which the climatic capacity of land is quantitatively and spatially assessed before being integrated with other environmental components. Within this framework, the baseline agricultural climatic capacity is determined based on two principal components, thermal and moisture capacities, and is subsequently refined using a set of complementary thermal and moisture indicators. Growing degree-days, growing season length, frost frequency, heatwave persistence, and sunshine duration were used to refine the thermal assessment, while the temporal concentration, variability, and drought intensity of precipitation were used to refine the moisture assessment. Following the standardization of the indicators and the application of adjustment coefficients, climatic capacities were aggregated into agricultural climatic capability classes. Appropriate agricultural farming systems, including rainfed cropping, irrigated cropping, horticulture, and combinations thereof, were then identified based on the combination of climatic capability and moisture capacity. The proposed framework transforms climate from a single information layer within comprehensive land evaluation into a specialized, decision-oriented layer for agricultural land-use planning. While retaining the utility of climate classifications, the framework enables the detection of within-class heterogeneity and improved differentiation of agricultural capacities. It can therefore be used as a specialized subsystem alongside assessments of soil, water resources, topography, and socioeconomic factors in comprehensive land-use planning. To evaluate the practical applicability of the framework, its results were examined in four provinces of Iran: Khuzestan, Golestan, Markazi, and Yazd. The results showed that Golestan, Khuzestan, and Markazi were predominantly classified as having high climatic capability, whereas the low class dominated in Yazd. These differences were also reflected in the composition of the proposed farming systems, highlighting the determining role of moisture conditions in distinguishing between rainfed and irrigated farming systems.