Development of soil-geographic information system from available non-registered hard copy maps in Egypt

Abstract EN

The Soil, Water, and Environment Research Institute (SWERI), Agricultural Research Center, Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation in Egypt has acquired large data sets for soil characteristics, soil classification, and soil suitability for agricultural purposes.

Such data have been collected for large areas of Egypt in hardcopy format with various scales ranging from 1: 50000 to 1: 250000 over a long period of time.

Unfortunately, these valuable soil maps have been developed in hard copy maps that did not contain any information regarding datum, map projection, or coordinate system.

Some of these soil maps contain few topographic features background (River Nile, shore line, few canals or drains).

Others do not contain any topographic features at all and share only an overlap area with other maps, preventing the usage of such huge valuable data.

A new approach has been adopted to transform the soil maps and data into a usable geo-reference format utilizing GIS tools.

All soil maps are scanned and transformed to raster format.

Topographic data sets with scales 1: 50000 and 1: 250000 sharing the same coverage of soil maps have been digitized and transformed to a comprehensive topographic GIS database, which are then used for raster soil maps geo-referencing.

Then the on screen digitizing process is performed to develop a soil GIS database for large area of Egypt, including various soil parameters and characteristics.

On this basis, the available maps and soil data could be collected in one data set, allowing for comprehensive soil investigation analysis and planning as well as establishing a base reference for change detection throughout various decades utilizing available remote sensing satellite images and soil data at SWERI in the future research.