Delineation, Classification and Evaluation of Physiographic Units in some Promising Areas for Agriculture in the North Eastern Part of Sinai Peninsula, Egypt | ||||
| Journal of Soil Sciences and Agricultural Engineering | ||||
| Article 13, Volume 9, Issue 11, November 2018, Page 637-645 PDF (532.54 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/jssae.2018.36503 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
| Salwa El-Sayied | ||||
| Soils, Water and Environment Research Institute, ARC, Egypt | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| The magnificence of the studied desert soils has been increased fast due to scale efforts to bring additional areas under the agricultural utilization projects in recent decades.The studied area is located in the North Eastern side of Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. It is considered as a promising area for agricultural utilization as well as a model for representing some landscape features in North Sinai. So, the current work has been undertaken for delineation of physiographic units, soil classification and land evaluation. The technique of space images interpretation plays an important role for tracing the prevailing physiographic units as well as identifying the promising sites for agricultural purposes. The obtained data of landsate images interpretation indicate that the area under consideration is occupied by ten main physiographic units namely, Coastal plain (Cp), Sand sheets (SS); Alluvial plain (Ap); Upper terraces (Ut); Lower terraces (Lt); Wadi bottom (Wb); Sand dunes (Sd); Pediplain (Pb), Sabkha (Sa) and Dissected hills (DH). Soils taxa were surveyed according to the Keys to Soil Taxonomy (USDA, 2014) and could be categorized into two Orders Aridisols and Entisols and seven sub great groups as follows: i) Aridisols, include three subgroups of Calcic Haplosalids, Typic Haplocalcids and Sodic Haplocalicids ii) Entisols include four sugroups of Aquic Quartzipsamments; Typic Quartzipsamments, Typic Torripsamments and Typic Torrifluvents According to land evaluation system undertaken by Sys and Verheye (1978) and Sys et al.(1991), the current suitability for agricultural irrigated soils could be categorized into two suitability classes i.e., marginally suitable (S3) and not suitable (N) and six subclasses (S3s, S3t, N1tws, N1sn, N1tsn and N1wsn) , which are suffering from some soil properties , i.e., soil texture , soil depth, wetness, topography and salinity and alkalinity as soil limitations with different intensity degree (moderate and severe). By executing the suitable soil improvement practices, the potential suitability classes assessed three classes i.e., moderately suitable (S2), marginally suitable (S3) and not suitable (N2); and five subclasses (S2s, S2ws, S2sn, S3s and N2). Also, soil suitability for specific crops (i.e., alfalfa, barley, wheat, sunflower, tomato, potato, watermelon, green pepper, citrus, guava, olives and mango), were presented for soils developed on the identified physiographic units in land suitability guide tables. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Remote Sensing (RS); GIS; soil taxa and land evaluation | ||||
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