Evaluation of Soil Quality in Arid Western Fringes of the Nile Delta for Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

Egypt is currently witnessing an extensive desert greening plan with a target of adding one and a half million feddans to the agricultural area. The present study evaluates the soil quality in the western desert fringes of the Nile Delta using three indicator datasets, which involve the total dataset (TDS), the minimum dataset (MDS), and the expert dataset (EDS). Three quality index models are included: the Additive Soil Quality Index (SQI-A), the Weighted Additive Soil Quality Index (SQI-W), and the Nemoro Soil Quality Index (SQI-N). Linear and nonlinear scoring functions are evaluated for scoring soil and terrain indicators. Thirteen soil quality indicators and three terrain indicators were measured in 397 sampling sites for soil quality evaluation. Factor analyses determined five soil and terrain indicators for the minimum dataset and their associated weights. The linear scoring functions reflected the soil system functions more than nonlinear scoring functions. Soil quality estimation by the minimum dataset (MDS) and Weighted Additive Soil Quality Index (SQI-W) is more sensitive than that by SQI-A and SQI-N quality models to explain soil quality indicators. The moderate soil quality grade is the largest quality grade in the studied area. The minimum dataset of soil quality indicators could assist in reducing time and cost of evaluating soil quality and monitoring the temporal changes in soil quality of the region due to the increased agricultural development.

Using GIS Tools and Remote Sensing Data to Assessment of Land Capability and Suitability for Agriculture in New Aswan Area, Aswan Governorate, Egypt

“…Figure (4) shows that soils are coarse-textured mainly sand to loamy sand texture. The results achieved correspond to those by Abd Al-Azem (2016), Abd Al-Azem (2020), Saleh et al, (2021) and Fadl et al, (2022). Moreover, the high values of soil hydraulic conductivity (HC) in most of the studied samples may be due to the coarse soil ____________________________ Egypt.…”

Soil Quality Indicators under Different Smallholder Managed Cropping and Landuse Practices in Abuja, Nigeria

“…Numerous studies have been carried out to assess changes in soil quality resulting from different landuse practices using a variety of indicators (see, for instance, Islam & Weil, 2000;Ezeaku, 2015;Bünemann et al, 2018;Doğan & Gülser, 2019;Kongor et al, 2019;Mulyono et al, 2019;Sefati et al, 2019;Nguemezi et al, 2020;Amoakwah, 2021;Kaur et al, 2021;Mulat et al, 2021;Nath et al, 2021;Saleh et al, 2021;Silvianingsih et al, 2021). Changes in soil indicators and other metrics can be used to quantify soil quality changes brought about by different CLUPs of which the use of soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), and soil reaction (pH) represent the three most common ones (Pham, 2010;Pham et al, 2018a;Vashisht et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2021).…”

Land evaluation of different land cover classes for agricultural use in south east of Egypt using remote sensing data

“…It's a perfect tool to assess land use/cover (Arafat et al, 2014a;Elsharkawy et al, 2022a;Nabil et al, 2022). It can be used to realize an integration of maximizing the use of water and land resources based on a complementary view (AbdelRahman et al, 2022;Elsharkawy et al, 2022b;Saleh et al, 2021). Satellite imageries also are widely used for mapping the Egyptian water resources (Elsharkawy, 2023).…”

“…Also aligning the old cultivated River Nile sediments with easy excess for marketing and dealing beneficial activities. The processed and displayed data by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) resulting in interpreted spectral signatures of landscape features associated with specific soil taxa (Saleh et al, 2021). They can be used as a geo-data base to serve the extrapolation process when other area in the same region will be investigated (Elsharkawy et al, 2022b).…”