## 4 Discussion  
The obtained findings of this study indicate that the density of total date palm trees (i.e., number of tree/farm) in the Al-Ahsa oasis is mainly oriented to the northern (i.e., Jlejilah) and central (i.e., Al-Harah) subregions of the oasis with tendencies of high and  
Figure 6: BiLISA (**a**) clustering and (**b**) significance maps, for total date trees number plotted against total cultivated area, examined by (**c**) Moran’s \(I\). Figure 7: BiLISA clustering maps showing the spatial correspondence between cultivated areas and (**a**) Khlas, (**b**) Ruziz, and (**c**) Shishi cultivars as the number of trees. very high (i.e., 101-200 and \(>\)200 trees/farm, respectively) ranks (Figure 3a). Yet, the lowest density of trees in a farm is in the eastern subregion (Al-Mansourah), where most farms contain \(<\)50 tree/farm (Figure 3a). These findings are in line with the spatial distribution of cultivated areas, where the high (i.e., 1001-10,000 m\({}^{2}\)) and very high (i.e., \(>\)10,000 m\({}^{2}\)) classes also exist in the former two subregions (Figure 4a). Moreover, such outcomes can be ascertained by the results of the applied categorical-type correlations between the farms' areas, the total numbers of palm trees/farm, and the palm tree cultivars (i.e., numbers and cultivated areas) (Tables 1-4). On the other hand, the small agricultural holdings (i.e., cultivated area \(<\)500 m\({}^{2}\)) that lay at the central subregion of the oasis have shown significant correspondence (Figure 7a,b) as the small farms' areas are entirely utilized by palm trees. Thus, these findings may be justified by the dominant small sizes of the agricultural farms in the Al-Ahsa oasis [17; 34]. [PERSON] et al. [17], for instance, indicated that 92% of the total agricultural land in the oasis is cultivated with date palm trees that are planted at a spacing of 6.20 m \(\times\) 6.20 m in the east and 7.46 m \(\times\) 7.46 m in the north with the interspacing being planted with some fruit trees and other crops. In addition, [PERSON] [47] reported that almost 80% of farms in the oasis have sizes between 0.5 and 4 ha (i.e., 1 to 10 acres). Such small farms mainly resulted from physical and sociological factors [34; 48; 49]. The physical factors are related to the shortage of groundwater to meet growing demands for irrigation water over times; the land's topographical nature limiting the size and distribution of farms; and the main climatic data featured by evapotranspiration high rates and periodic strong dry winds. The sociological factors are linked with the inheriting Islamic law that allows lands to be divided between inheritors leading eventually to smaller farms. The latter factor, however, is well observed in the old-cultivated areas available in the central and eastern subregions. Moreover, the current study denoted the cultivation superiority of the Khlas cultivar in the Al-Ahsa oasis over the other studied cultivars of Ruziz and Shishi, whether in the spatial distribution of the number of trees/farm (Figure 3b) or in cultivated areas (Figure 4b). The obtained data revealed that the Khlas cultivar was the cultivar absent the least from the studied farms (i.e., 3.1%, 9 of 288 farms,), as compared with the Ruziz cultivar (i.e., 31.9%) and the Shishi cultivar (i.e., 37.8%) (Tables 1 and 3). This domination of the Khlas cultivar was also verified by the results of the cross-TAB correlation that showed it as being mostly grown in the low rank of the total number of trees (i.e., \(<\)50 trees/farm) with 64.9%, distributed between the cultivated areas of low class (i.e., \(<\)500) and medium class (i.e., 501-1000 m\({}^{2}\)), with 94.4% and 65.6%, respectively (Table 1). The data also confirmed that this cultivar is the only one found in the categorical classes of high (i.e., 1001-10,000 m\({}^{2}\)) and very high (i.e., \(>\)10,000 m\({}^{2}\)) cultivated areas. These findings of the Khlas superiority in the oasis have also been concluded by [PERSON] et al.