Potentialities of Agricultural Development for Some Soil Along Aswan-Toshka District

Document Type : Original Article

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Desert Research Center

Abstract

The proficient management of the  available natural resources of Egypt is necessary in order to save food demands of the rapidly increasing population. In the processing of land use planning, estimating the agricultural land potentiality is important footstep where the agricultural resources are so limited. Toshka spillway area is one of the greatest promising area for horizontal agricultural extension where the fresh water is available. The main goal of the current study is to produce land priority map based on different thematic layers of some soil parameters that affect on or control the agricultural potentiality by designing a suitable GIS-based model for data integration with relevant logical condition of the area along Aswan Toshka District, south of Egypt. The parameters taken into consideration were slope, soil texture, soil depth, gravel content, calcium carbonate, soil salinity, and soil reaction. By using GIS environment, these parameters were interpolated in order to recognize their spatial variability by differentiating each property as sever, moderate, slight, and no limitations. Accordingly, The analysis showed that the soil depth, soil gravel, and soil reaction were the major limitation factors comparing with the other soil factors. The priority of Land Suitability Potential Index (LSPI) for Agricultural purpose was calculated by the contribution of the abovementioned parameters. The  potentiality was categorized as not suitable, marginally suitable, moderately suitable, and highly suitable. These classes were attained by integrating the different thematic layers with corresponding weights in geographical information system (GIS). The output of study indicated that the study area can be mainly described as moderately suitable where it covers about 81.04 % of the total area, while highly suitable, marginal suitable and not suitable attained the lower converge 9.23, 9.01, and 0.72 %, respectively. The study concluded that any given area can be categorized into spatially distributed agricultural potential zones based on the soil characteristics and  terrain properties by the profound assist of geographical information system (GIS).

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