Cultivation and harvest of oil seeds are of high economic value in the world today.Extraction and exportation of oil has a special place in the non-oil exports of Iran. Canolais an economical oil seed and over the last few years many attempts have been made to increase its subculture in different regions of the country. But it must be noted that due to various factors that affect the growth and performance of autumn canola, the process of evaluating suitability of site for cultivation requires comprehensive spatial and descriptive information. GIS technology enablesthe application of these data and facilitates the spatial analysis of data based on relevant models. Thus, in the present research, considering the ecological needs of autumn canola, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) is applied based on Analytic Hierarchy Process and the modeling and then spatial analysis of the data were carried outusingArcGIS 9.3 software. Finally, the zones favorable to the cultivation of autumn canola in Ardabil Province were evaluated and demarcated. The results of the research show that zones with severe restrictions, relatively high restrictions, moderate restrictions, few restrictions, and now restrictions respectively constitute 38, 21.27, 19.01, 16.27, and 5.45 percent of the entire province.
