## 5 Conclusions  
The current study, unprecedentedly, has elucidated some insights on the spatial distributions of the date palm plantations of the most important cultivars (i.e., Khlas, Ruzz, and Shishi) in the Al-Ahsa oasis, as a prime area of date palm cultivation in the KSA. The applied techniques of GIS, and statistical and spatial methods have shown that most of the oasis farms lay within the cultivated area rank of \(<\)500 m\({}^{2}\), followed by a relatively balanced number of farms within the area ranks of 501-1000 and 1001-10,000 m\({}^{2}\). It has also been observed that the ranked cultivated large areas are mostly in the northern and central subregions of the oasis, which is in line with the distribution of date palm trees, whether in total numbers or per farm. The three cultivars were grown together in 56.9% of the studied farms, mostly in farms within a rank of a \(<\)500 m\({}^{2}\) cultivated area that had the greatest tendency for date palm cultivation in the oasis, whereas they were not found together in farms with a cultivated large area (i.e., \(>\)10,000 m\({}^{2}\)) that solely had the Khlas cultivar. The Khlas cultivar was the most dominant as it was the least absent from all categories of cultivated areas, with only 3.1% compared with 31.9% for Ruzz and 37.8% for Shishi cultivars. The obtained findings of the statistical correlation from cross-TAB and the BiLISA clustering maps noticeably disclosed distinguished and significance relationships in the oasis between the distribution of cultivated areas and date palm trees. The applied Pearson's R (Interval by Interval) and Spearman correlation (Ordinal by Ordinal) tests indicated that the correlation values between the distribution of farms' cultivated areas and the distribution of the three cultivars' cultivated areas were, respectively, 0.81, 0.45, and 0.42, with approximate significances of 0.000 \(p\)-values. Moreover, the obtained bivariate Moran's \(I\) was 0.16 with 999 permutations and 0.001 pseudo \(p\)-value. Thus, these results substantiate the strong associations between the farms' cultivated areas and the number of trees per farm or in total. This spatial distribution of the date palm plantations in the oasis was also observed to be consistent with the spatial variation in the salinity aspects of soils and irrigation water, necessitating the need for special agricultural extension programs. These programs ought to take into account the variability in salinity to sustain date palm production and manage the agricultural sustainability of the oasis. It may also be conceived that the outcomes of the present study are precious to the sustainability of the date palm in the Al-Ahsa oasis, and for the growers, the national authorities of agriculture and environment, and policy makers. Finally, the results of the current investigation suggest the need for further studies that correlate the spatial distribution of the date palm cultivars with other abiotic factors such as: soil properties, irrigation water quality, and agricultural practices. Moreover, other studies related to the impact of agricultural extension services on date palm plantations are necessitated in order to improve farmers' skills aiming to sustain such plantations. Another group of studies may be suggested that deal with modelling the relationship between the cultivated area and the date palm plantation, using some of the new techniques. Conceptualization, A.I.H.I., A.M.A., A.A.H. and S.D. ; methodology, A.M.A. and A.A.H. ; software, A.A.H. ; validation, A.I.H.I, A.M.A., A.A.H. and S.D. ; formal analysis, A.I.H.I., A.A.H. and A.M.A. ; investigation, A.I.H.I. and A.M.A. ; resources, A.I.H.I. ; data curation, A.A.H. and A.M.A. ; writing--original draft preparation, A.A.H. ; writing--review and editing, A.I.H.I., A.M.A. and S.D. ; visualization, A.I.H.I., A.M.A., A.A.H. and S.D. ; funding acquisition, A.I.H.I. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.