A FRAMEWORK OF GEOGRAPHIC DATABASE FOR FAYOUM SOILS, EGYPT

Abstract

A framework of geographic soil database is designed for Fayoum Governorate soils with the goal to develop an integrated GIS system that can help for best management and development ofFayoum soils. A pilot study area was selected in Sinnuris District to implement the proposed database. The study aimed to the following objectives: a) to set up a suitable framework of geographic soil database in the area. b) to establish the minimum data sets required for database. c) to integrate the previous soil studies with the present one to provide soil scientists and decision makers with the basic soil data required for different soil models and applications. d) to utilize information technology needed for future Egyptian digital soil database containing digitized soil maps stored with their attributes data and supported with chosen profiles point data. Aerial photo­ interpretation followed by conventional field survey and laboratory analyses were integrated with the GIS capabilities to provide a suitable base map with scale 1: 50000. The main physical and chemical characteristics of the different mapping

units were determined and stored into ILWIS 2.23 GIS. The methodological modeling issues were comprehensively indicated. Different queries of soil properties can be done either on tabular or spatial data. The resulted database is tested also for developing some soil models. The resulted stored data can be transformed to different databases and GIS formats.