Agro-management zones recently became the backbone of modern agriculture. Delineating management zones for Variable-Rate Fertilization (VRF) can provide important ecological benefits and better sustainability of the new Egyptian farming projects. This article aims to represent an approach for delineating management zones using Spatial Multicriteria Evaluation (SMCE) within irrigated peanut pivot situated at the eastern Nile Delta, Egypt. The results indicated that soil data, such as soil texture, soil type, the elevation of the landscape, and slope, allow for sampling the study area into similar classes and in smaller units, along with a crop productivity map. The effects of the variability in soil characteristics within the field on Peanut yields are predicted by the soil suitability model. In addition, final management zones map a varied amount of nutrients that could be added to different pivot zones. In conclusion, mapping soil units with a sufficient number of field observations within each class provided an acceptable accuracy, and a good spatial distribution of the suitability classification was achieved. Hence, agro-management zones are essentially needed for policymakers in a specific field in order to furnish an evaluation about the transformations at a territorial scale and for studying the strategies to realize environmental sustainability and to reduce the territorial impacts.
In order to ensure the sustainability of production from agricultural lands, the degradation processes surrounding the fertile land environment must be monitored. Human-induced risk and status of soil degradation (SD) were assessed in the Northern-Eastern part of the Nile delta using trend analyses for years 2013 to 2023. SD hotspot areas were identified using time-series analysis of satellite-derived indices as a small fraction of the difference between the observed indices and the geostatistical analyses projected from the soil data. The method operated on the assumption that the negative trend of photosynthetic capacity of plants is an indicator of SD independently of climate variability. Combinations of soil, water, and vegetation’s indices were integrated to achieve the goals of the study. Thirteen soil profiles were dug in the hotspots areas. The soil was affected by salinity and alkalinity risks ranging from slight to strong, while compaction and waterlogging ranged from slight to moderate. According to the GIS-model results, 30% of the soils were subject to slight degradation threats, 50% were subject to strong risks, and 20% were subject to moderate risks. The primary human-caused sources of SD are excessive irrigation, poor conservation practices, improper utilisation of heavy machines, and insufficient drainage. Electrical conductivity (EC), exchangeable soil percentage (ESP), bulk density (BD), and water table depth were the main causes of SD in the area. Generally, chemical degradation risks were low, while physical risks were very high in the area. Trend analyses of remote sensing indices (RSI) proved to be effective and accurate tools to monitor environmental dynamic changes. Principal components analyses were used to compare and prioritise among the used RSI. RSI pixel-wise residual trend indicated SD areas were related to soil data. The spatial and temporal trends of the indices in the region followed the patterns of drought, salinity, soil moisture, and the difficulties in separating the impacts of drought and submerged on SD on vegetation photosynthetic capacity. Therefore, future studies of land degradation and desertification should proceed using indices as a factor predictor of SD analysis.
Oasis lands in Egypt are commonly described as salty soils; therefore, waterlogging and higher soil salinity are major obstacles to sustainable agricultural development. This study aims to map and assess soil salinization at El-Farafra Oasis in the Egypt Western Desert based on salinity indices, Imaging Spectroscopy (IS), and statistical techniques. The regression model was developed to test the relationship between the electrical conductivity (ECe) of 70 surface soil samples and seven salinity indices (SI 1, SI 2, SI 5, SI 6, SI 7, SI 8, and SI 9) to produce soil salinity maps depending on Landsat-8 (OLI) images. The investigations of soil salinization and salinity indices were validated in a studied area based on 30 soil samples; the obtained results represented that all salinity indices have shown satisfactory correlations between ECe values for each soil sample site and salinity indices, except for the SI 5 index that present non-significant correlations with R2 value of 0.2688. The SI 8 index shows a higher negative significant correlation with ECe and an R2 value of 0.6356. There is a significant positive correlation at the (p < 0.01) level between SI 9 and ECe (r = 0.514), a non-significant correlation at the (p < 0.05) level between soil ECe and SI 1 index (r = 0.495), and the best-verified salinity index was for SI 7 that has a low estimated RMSE error of 8.58. Finally, the highest standard error (R2) was represented as ECe (dS m−1) with an R2 of 0.881, and the lowest one was SI 9 with an R2 of 0.428, according to Tukey’s test analysis. Therefore, observing and investigating soil salinity are essential requirements for appropriate natural resource management plans in the future.
Salinity systems are well known as extreme environmental systems that occur either naturally or by certain human activities, in arid and semiarid regions, which may harm crop production. Soil salinity identification is essential for soil management and reclamation projects. Information derived from space data acquisition systems (e.g., Landsat, ASTER) is considered as one of the most rapid techniques in mapping Salt-Affected Soil (SAfSoil). The current study tested the previously proposed salinity indices on the northern Nile Delta region, Egypt. The results indicated that most of the indices were not suitable to detect the SAfSoil in the area, due to the interaction between the bare soils, salts, and urbanization. To resolve this issue, the current work suggested a new index for detecting and monitoring the SAfSoil in the Nile Delta region. The newly proposed index takes into consideration plant health, the salt crust at the surface of the soils, as well as urbanization. It facilitates the mapping processes of SAfSoil in the area compared to any other previously proposed index. In this respect, multi-temporal Landsat-7 and 8 satellite data, acquired in 2002, 2016, and 2021, were used. The new index was prepared using the 2002 data and verified using the 2016 and 2021 data. Field measurements and data collected during 2002, 2016, and 2021 were utilized as ground truth data to assess the accuracy of the results obtained from the proposed index. The evaluation of the results indicated that the accuracy assessment for 2002, 2016, and 2021 images was 94.58, 96.08, and 95.68%, respectively. Finally, the effectiveness of using remote sensing in detecting and mapping SAfSoil is outlined.
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