LAND EVALUATION IN NORTHERN WESTERN COAST (NWC) OF EGYPT USING NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Food scarcity and continuous loss of agricultural land are issues of global concern. The government of Egypt adopted policies loading to self-sufficiency in food production, e.g. extending of cultivated land and maximizing of production of the existing agricultural land. Such frequent progressive increase requires paying considerable attention to conserve our limited land resources to optimize our agricultural productivity per unit area and to maximize the agricultural reclaimed land, through a series of projects to develop new lands in the desert. Therefore, this study aims at integrating soil characteristics with remote sensing (RS) data and Geographic Information System (GIS) to produce a dataset concerning land resources and land evaluation, for decision support systems of Al-Alamein-El-Dabaa area in north-western coast of Egypt. Landsat 8 satellite data were used to obtain maps of physiography, land cover and land evaluation. Thirty one soil profiles were dug to represent the physiographic units. The studied soils of were categorized under tow orders (Entisols and Aridisols) and under the subgroups of Gypsic Aquisalids, Typic Calcigypsids, Lithic Haplocalcids, Typic Haplocalcids, Lithic Torriorthents and Typic Torriorthents. Land evaluation system was carried out using the FAO framework for land evaluation (FAO, 1976). Soils of the study area are belonging to Good (C2), Fair (C3), very poor (C5) and Non-agriculture (C6) grades of the land capability. Land suitability classification was carried out to determine the current and potential land suitability for some selected crops. Key Words: Land Evaluation, The North-western Coast, Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS).