MONITORING LAND COVER CHANGES OF THE NORTHWESTERN AREA AT EL FAYOUM DEPRESSION AND ITS SOIL SUITABILITY FOR AGRICULTURAL PURPOSES | ||
| Fayoum Journal of Agricultural Research and Development | ||
| Article 6, Volume 25, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 68-87 PDF (1.23 M) | ||
| Document Type: Research articles. | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/fjard.2011.195478 | ||
| Authors | ||
| Tolba S. Abdel Aal1; Abdel Aziz B.A. Belal2 | ||
| 1Soils and Water Dept., Fac. of Agric., El Fayoum University, Egypt | ||
| 2National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, Egypt | ||
| Abstract | ||
| This study is a trail for monitoring land cover changes by using Landsat Imagery technique as well as determining soil suitability for irrigated agriculture at the north-western outskirt of El-Fayoum depression during a period of 1984- 2005. The studied area lies between latitudes of 29o 19" and 29o 26" N and longitudes of 30o 24" and 30o 34"E. To achieve this target, Landsat Imagery technique was carried out using two Landsat Thematic Mapper and Enhance Thematic Mapper scenes acquired on 1984 and 2005 covering the north-western part of El-Fayoum depression have been processed. A supervised Spectral Angler Mapper approach was also applied to classify the images into four land use/cover classes, i.e., urban, agriculture, water and desert areas. It was observed that some desert areas had been transformed into agriculture and settlement during the investigated period of twenty one year (1984-2005). This study clarified that the reclaimed area for agriculture purposes during the studied period reached 1726.91 ha, which constitute about 8.15 % of the total area under study and nation settlement (arbanization) increased with about 310.06 ha, which couple nearly 1.46% of the total area. Whereas, the water area was promoted with 31.48 ha, which equal about 0.22 %. All the land cover units were increased account on the expanse of desert unit, which decreased with 2097.20 ha (9.78% of the total studied area). These increases are more attributed to the geophysical and anthropogenic processes such as salinity, alkalinity, water logging, wind erosion, reclamation of new agricultural land and urbanization. The satellite image interpretation map of the year 2005 was identified into two main landscapes and thirteen landform units, based on the visual interpretation of Landsat data ETM7 (Enhanced Thematic Mapper 7) and applying the Landscape feature approaches. The validity of physiographic map < br />bounders were field checked to represent the different soil mapping units with model soil profiles. Thirty-two mini pits were located and studied for setting up < br />the physiographic boundaries and characteristic of soil map legend. Also, the variations of soil characteristics between the main identified physiographic units were represented by eighteen soil profiles, which chosen to be full morphologically described according to USDA (2003). Soil taxa were surveyed according to the USDA (1975 and 2010), and the studied soils could be categorized into three orders and six sub-groups, as follows: Aridisols (Typic Calcigypsids, Lithic Calcigypsids, and Typic Haplocalcids), Entisols (Typic Torriorthents and Typic Torrifluvents) and Vertisols (Typic Haplotorrierts). According to the parametric system undertaken by Sys and Verheye (1978), soil suitability classes of the studied area could be categorized into four classes, i.e., highly (S1), moderately (S2), marginally (S3) and not suitable (N1 & N2). | ||
| Keywords | ||
| El-Fayoum soils; land cover changes detection; monitoring land reclamation process and land evaluation | ||
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