Integrating GIS and modeling for agricultural land suitability evaluation at East Wadi El-Natrun, Egypt [electronic resource].

Includes references.

The study aimed to evaluate the capability and suitability of East Wadi El-Natrun lands, Egypt, having a total area of about 16400 feddan. The evaluation process was done using a computer program (ALES-Arid) that proposed and designed in this study. The computer program was developed basing on the minimum dataset and the mathematical modeling of different land evaluation parameters (soil physical, chemical and fertility characteristics; irrigation water quality and climate) has been utilized. ALES-Arid has been developed to facilitate the calculation of index value of land capability and land suitability, as well as their classes and limitations. Interpolation of different soil characteristics was done to create detailed soil maps. The map of soil units was created through the overlaying process, using the interpolated maps of soil salinity, soil alkalinity, soil calcium carbonate content, along with the gravel map derived from the revised unsupervised classification. The results indicate that there are two main soil units based on gravel cover, and ten soil subunits based on soil characteristics. The results from ALES-Arid program showed that soils of the studied area could be classified into two capability classes (C3 Fair and C4 poor). Wheat followed by olive was the most suitable crops to be grown in the studied area. The dominant limiting land capability and crop suitability factors were soil texture, available water, permeability, cation exchangeable capacity, and fertility parameters. Voronoi polygons were building around each soil observation, and then the output data of ALES-Arid were exported to GIS environment to create land capability and suitability maps.

Summary in Arabic.

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