Land Evaluation of some Soils for El- Farafra Oasis, New Valley Governorate, Egypt تقييم بعض أراضي واحة الفرافرة بمحافظة الوادى الجديد - مصر

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Soil, Water and Environment Research Institute – ARC

2 Faculty of Agric.- Fayoum Univ.

Abstract

This work aims to identify the main physiographic units and their soil taxonomic ones as well as land evaluation for some promising areas of El- Farafra Oasis. The main materials and methods were Sentinel 2 image (2019), visual interpretation and digital elevation model (DEM) were used to produce physiographic soil map. The physiographic point of view, the landscapes include two units, i.e. plateau and depression floor. Eighteen profiles and seventy-two augers were dug to check the main physiographic mapping units in the studied area. Soil samples have been collected from the representative soil profiles for physical and chemical analysis. The main results pointed out that the El-Farafra oasis were classified into four capability classes, i.e. S2, S3, N1 and N2. The soils of S2 have moderate limitations for agricultural crops, whereas texture is the main limiting factor (18.55). The main limiting factors of soils of S3 are texture, soil depth and salinity (41.22 %). The soils of N1 (11.46 %), also the permanent not suitable of N2 (21.06 %) include rocky areas and very shallow soils. The cultivated area is about 7.7% of the total aforementioned area.  The suitability for cultivation four main crops namely wheat, barley, sorghum and olive in the studied area are assessed. Olive was the most suitable to cultivation in these soils.

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