Using remote sensing and GIS technique to study soil physical properties for Hour al-Hammar (south of Iraq)‎

الملخص EN

This paper includes the digital image processing (image enhancement and the digital classification techniques) using ERDAS, ver., 8.7, package for Landsat 7 (ETM+) , 3-visible bands with resolution (14.25m) , acquired in March 2004.

The field investigation includes GPS surveying, which coincides with the reports of the laboratory tests (physical tests) , which include soil classification test (according to the unified soil classification system (USCS) , for certain locations) , and spectral measurements by using radiometer instrument.

The main results of this study show that the selected visible bands in the digital visual interpretation process are considered an optimum means to sense the soil types.

It is found that the study region soil has high content of the fine soil texture (clay and silt) .

Therefore, the digital map of unsupervised classification gives good presentation of some of the main landcover classes and merges the others, whereas the supervised classification gives good presentation of the main landcover classes with overall accuracy equal to (99.7%) .