The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) with the collaboration of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), has developed this system, which enables rational land-use planning on the basis of an inventory of land resources and evaluation of biophysical limitations and potentials.
It is anticipated that the AEZ process will be crucial in identifying agricultural and natural resource baselines, and in monitoring how these baselines are being altered. The AEZ methodology also provides a means of identifying how natural resources and agricultural production is likely to be perturbed under future climate scenarios and in identifying suitable crops and locations under future climate scenarios.
Recent availability of digital global databases of climatic parameters, topography, soil and terrain, vegetation, and population distribution has called for revisions and improvements in calculation procedures and in turn has allowed for expanding assessments of AEZ crop suitability and land productivity potentials to temperate and boreal environments.