Soil salinity distribution maps for selected soil samples in Qalat Suker City, Thi-Qar Southern Iraq

Abstract EN

The soil salinity distribution maps were drawn for Qalar Suker city/ Thi-Qar governorate-southern Iraq for depths of 0-5 cm and 5-15 cm with a total area of 55 km2 by taking 34 soil samples, 17 samples for each depth.

The EC values for the 0-5 cm depth samples ranged between 2.2 dS/m (Q17) and 48.1 dS/m (Q6) and the EC values for the 5-15 cm depth samples ranged from 1.9 dS/m (Q7) and 39.0 dS/m (Q13).

Contour maps of the study area were drawn using Surfer ® Software, version 7, The contour maps of the depth of 0-5 cm shows that the northern and western parts of the study dominate of the high conductivity values (> 20 dS/m) while the central, eastern and southern parts are controlled by the low conductivity values.

For the 5-15 cm depth samples, EC contour map showed that the western parts of the study area have high EC values (> 20 dS/m), while for the northern, western, central and southern parts, the EC values were low.

In general, the EC values for the 0-5 cm depth samples, are relatively higher than the 5-15 cm depth samples, the reason may be is the level of ground water is close from the ground surface which helps with the capillary rise property to deposit the salts near the surface and under shallow depths as well as high temperature and increased the evaporation which deposit the salts near the surface.

Two desertification classification maps were drawn for the two depth.

they showed that the desertified areas in the 0-5 cm depth region are wider than the 5-15 cm depth sample areas.

Also, the desertification maps showed that the surface soil desertified more than the subsurface soil, this is may be due to the surface land use and the weather influence