Land capability and suitability of some soils at North-West of Dashlut, Assiut, Egypt

Abstract

Twelve soil profiles representing North-West of Dashlut area, Assiut, Egypt were selected and dug, and 43 soil samples were collected from these profiles to evaluate its productive capability and suitability for growing selected crops. The soils of this area had a coarse texture grades (sand, loamy sand, and sandy loam). Most of these soils were highly saline (ECe > 16 dS/m) and showed low values of organic matter and available NPK, some of these soils are considered as calcareous. Tow modern programs including the applied system of land evaluation (ASLE) and the microcomputer land evaluation information system (MicroLEIS) were applied to assess the capability of these soils and their suitability to grow selected crops. The results of land capability showed that the soils of the study area were poor (C4), very poor (C5), and non-agricultural (C6) using the ASLE program, while the MicroLEIS (Cervatana model) program pointed that soils had moderately (S3) and marginally (N1) capable grades. Moreover, using the ASLE program, the soils of the study area were highly suitable, suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable, and currently not suitable and permanently not suitable for 28 field and vegetable crops and fruits. The land suitability using MicroLEIS (Almagra model) program indicated that the soils of this area were moderately suitable, marginally suitable, and non-suitable for the selected crops due to one or more of the limiting factors. The geostatistics approach performed with ordinary kriging interpolation and semivariogram was applied to create a detailed and spatialized map for each soil parameter. Circular, J-Bessel, J-Bessel, and Stable geostatistical models were used to define the spatial variability of soil parameters based on RMS, MSE, and RMSSE. The main soil limitations of these soils were soil texture, soil salinity, and low soil fertility. However, these soil limitations are none permanent and can be improved through applying suited management practices.

Geographic Information Systems for Egyptian Agricultural land evaluation

“…Capability and suitability maps were generated using GIS tools. El- Sayed et al (2020) successfully mapped capability and suitability of soils in Sohag using GIS-Geostatistical model while Sayed and Khalafalla (2021) recommended the same procedure for mapping land evaluation results. Abosafia et al (2022) could map their outputs of land evaluation models for some parts of Kafr-Elsheikh using GIS tools.…”

“…Moreover, Ibrahim et al (2013) mentioned that the integration of GIS and remote sensing was found to be an effective tool for sustainable land use planning. Sayed and Khalafalla (2021) concluded that GIS technique with geostatistical tools is a valuable approach for capability and suitability evaluation of land. For land suitability evaluation, there many layers of data related to soil parameters, climatic conditions, social and environmental impacts of a specific land use that planned to be evaluated.…”

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

“…Lands are evaluated according to their chemical and physical capabilities as well as constraints to protect soil resources from degradation through the potential to fulfill farmers' demands for optimum crop production (Sharififar, 2012). Geographic information systems technique combined with geostatistical analysis is an effective method for assessing the capacity and suitability of land (Sayed and Khalafalla 2021). Images from remote sensing (RS) are an effective technique for studying the T Egyptian Journal of Soil Science http://ejss.journals.ekb.eg/ ____________________________ Egypt.…”

Mapping Soil Properties and Land Evaluation for Agricultural Purposes, El Alamein Area, the North-Western Coast, Egypt

“…Land evaluation using different models such as ASLE model (El-Seedy, 2019), ALES-Arid model (Mahmoud et al, 2020;Nada et al, 2022), and MicroLEIS model (Yousif, 2019) by integration with GIS techniques. Sayed and Khalafalla (2021) used GIS techniques for land evaluation of some soils in Northwest of Dashlut, Assiut, Egypt. The same techniques were used for the same purpose in Eastern Sohag (Moursy et al, 2020), Tushka area (Abd El-Aziz, 2018), Southwest of Aswan city (Aldabaa and Yousif, 2020), ElQusiya Area, Assiut (Fadl and Sayed, 2020), and Bahariya Oasis (Shokr et al, 2022).…”