GIS-based for land evaluation in some areas at west of Nile delta

Abstract EN

Land suitability evaluation is one of the most effective methods for favorable agricultural land use planning and evaluating the suitability of land for a specific crop.

The purpose of the current study is to use GIS and Automated Land Evaluation System (ALES) to evaluate the land capability and crop suitability for various soils and biophysical conditions.

The current study was carried out to demonstrate the usefulness of GIS technologies coupled with soil data to evaluate crop suitability for obtaining sustainable cropping systems in the studied area.

As input, the model requires soil data for an assessment of the study area, 16 representative soil profiles were used to collect soil samples from different layers depth.

The capability evaluation gives four capability orders for agricultural and reclamation land capability, (Class I, good; Class II, moderate, Class III, weak and Class IV, marginal).

Moreover, the evaluation model gives four limiting factors suborders, which are topography (t), soils (l), erosion risks (r), and bioclimatic deficiency (b).

The suitability of selected field crops indicated that, wheat varied from highly suitable to permanent not suitable in different study areas.

Suitability of maize is similar to wheat crop.

Selected vegetable crops, tomato and onion are ranged from highly to permanent not suitable.

Land suitability of selected fruits, Apple is suitable for marginally suitability for cultivation in different development areas.

On the other hand, fig and olive is highly suitable for the most of the area.