Land Degradation, Causes, Implications and Sustainable Management in Arid and Semi Arid Regions: A Case Study of Egypt

Abstract

HIS REVIEW focuses on the main causes, effects and governmental management practices of soils in Egypt subjected to degradation threats. Land degradation became a global concern threatening food security and the ecosystem since it has a significant impact on the environment and agriculture. The major causes of degradation are alteration in climatic conditions, overgrazing, salinization, deforestation, depletion of soil organic matter content, desertification, waterlogging, inappropriate agronomic practices and erosion. It is paramount to reduce these causative factors in order to adequately manage the situation. The effects of these factors may lead to loss of ecosystem, biodiversity and agricultural yield/output. We can manage and improve the well-being of our soils in Egypt through afforestation, managing vegetation cover, soil reclamation, optimizing agricultural practices (e.g. tillage, irrigation and fertilization), avoidance of crop residues removal and application of organic matter to the farmland. Additionally, organic farming can be a substitute in keeping our land safe from degradation. The outstanding features of GIS and remote sensing, which include: field wide view, inexpensive costs, instantaneous data capturing, and sporadic imagery is now widely applied in the studies of land degradation due to its timeliness, coverage and efficiency. Future research in this area of study should empjasis on developing modern soil sensors, which will be connected with sattalite data, to predict the futute alterations in soil ecosystems and potetials of land degradation.

Soil Degradation under a Changing Climate: Management from Traditional to Nano-Approaches

“…It leads to the physical, chemical and biological decline in soil quality (Lal 2022), causes a decline in soil fertility (Wang et al 2021), loss of soil organic matter (Gregory 2023), erosion (Lal 2022), adverse changes in acidity, salinity or alkalinity (Xu et al 2023), excessive flooding, and/or the accumulation of toxic chemicals and pollutants . Many recent books have been published focusing on soil degradation issues such as soil management and climate change (Muñoz and Zornoza 2018), the impact of agriculture on soil degradation (Abdullahi et al 2023;Pereira et al 2023;Ganzour et al 2024;Sári et al 2024a), global degradation of soil and water resources (Li et al 2022), and increasing understanding of soil degradation (Saljnikov et al (2022a). Therefore, this mini-review focuses on soil degradation under changing climate.…”

Characterization of The Spatial Variability of Some Soil Physicochemical Properties of The El-Gallaba Plain, New Aswan City, Aswan Governorate, Egypt.

“…In addition, knowledge of the temporal and spatial variations of soil properties is important to evaluate the effects of agricultural works on environmental characteristics (Arnous and Hassan 2006;Goenster-Jordan et al, 2018). The Kriging method is the most powerful and effective interpolation method used in geostatistics applications However, many researchers have used GIS and geostatistics techniques as decision tools in many agricultural applications for the spatial interpolation of soil characteristics, land evaluation, and land suitability assessment (Da Silva et al, 2015;Mevlut 2016;Chang et al, 2014;Swify et al, 2017;Yousif, 2019;Aldabaa and Yousif 2020;Elnaggar 2021;Amer et al, 2021;Selmy et al, 2020 andNada et al, 2022;Abdullahi et al 2023;Okashaa, 2023).…”