A Synopsis on Egypt’s Digital Land Resources Database Serving Agricultural Development Plans

Abstract

Soil conservation practices, in the Egyptian Nile Valley and Delta, in addition to raising agricultural productivity are considered main objectives of the National sustainable plans. They are aiding in filling in the gap between agricultural production and needs required to feed the increasing population. Availability of detailed accurate land resources information is quite necessary to support land reclamation, conservation and management. The current study is aimed to explain previous investments in Egyptian land resources mapping, using recent technologies of multi-temporal satellite images and geographic information systems. Moreover, a digital information platform will be opened to store further future expected resources information. A GIS database was created, where previously produced analogue soil maps, covering the whole inhabited areas at the Egyptian Nile basin, Northern coast and desert oases, were input in digital format. Available topographic survey maps, at a scale of 1:100,000 were also used to extract different thematic layers (i.e. roads, rail ways, irrigation and drainage canals and infrastructure networks). Multi-temporal LANDSAT, SPOT and SRTM satellite images were processed and classified to produce land use and DEM GIS layers and to detect temporal changes. It was found that 45% of the Nile Delta and 15.5% of the valley are characterized by high production capability. Urban encroachment was found often occurring at the expense of most fertile soils, classified as Typic Torrifluvents and Vertic Torrifluvents. The imbalance between irrigation and drain network lengths, of some areas, refers to its impact on accelerating land degradation, water logging and salinization. Creation of the database saved previous major projects outcome data and will still be opened to add further future expected georeferenced information. Its accurate integration nature makes it rather important for decision support and management of sustainable development plans.