The effect of prevailing climatic conditions on detecting and monitoring soil salinity of kharga oasis based on landsat 8 OLI satellite and climate time series

الملخص EN

Undeniably, owing to prevailing climatic conditions, frequencies of severe weather events such as droughts, land deterioration, heatwaves, and soil salinization are predicted to rise in the future over arid and semi-arid lands, especially, kharga Oasis, which experiences the 'hot desert climate type' (BWh) in the southern and significant parts of Egypt corresponding to Koeppen's climate classification.

Soil salinization is one of the extreme land-degradation problems induced mainly by climate conditions owing to its unfortunate effects on land productivity.

Each year several hectares of land are degraded due to primary or secondary soil salinization, and as a result, it is becoming a serious economic and environmental concern in New Valley governorate.

Detecting and monitoring soil salinization in Kharga Oasis is accordingly important to support decision-making procedures for lessening adverse effects of land degradation due to the salinization, especially to kharga oasis, as one of the promising regions for agricultural development in Egypt.

Clearly, satellite data-based technologies supply cost-efficient, rapid, qualitative spatial data on soil salinity.

Kharga Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt is experiencing pronounced prevailing climatic condition induced geo-hazards such as soil salinization.

The present study aimed to study the effect of prevailing climatic conditions on detecting and monitoring soil salinization of Kharga Oasis.

To achieve the study aims, the present study used operating remote sensing and GIS techniques, soil sampling synchronized with a satellite image from the Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) Level 1T product during July 2018 have been analyzed by regression correlation analysis.

The present study was based not only on raw climate data and satellite images but also on field investigations of Kharga Oasis.

About Eighty-five percent of bare and fallow soils in the Oasis have salinity values more than 4dS/m.

The impacts of this salinization are illustrated in soil and vegetation.

It has been found that the area of extremely soil saline occupies an area of 6668 km2 or about 35.5% of the total area of Kharga Oasis.

Also, it was revealed through the study of the spatial distribution of soil salinity that the high salinity category is about 22.2% , and occupies 4733.7 km2, and the moderate and low salinity categories include 24% and 15.3% , covers about 5462.6 km2 and 2820 km2 of Kharga Oasis, respectively.

The climate, anthropogenic factors, and the low-level existence are the direct causes of soil salinization in Kharga Oasis.