GIS BASED LAND EVALUATION IN BAHARYIA OASIS, WESTERN DESERT, EGYPT

Sustainable agriculture is the main goal of land evaluation. The current study deals with land evaluation of El-Bahariya Oasis, located in western desert of Egypt. The Agricultural Land Evaluation System for arid and semi-arid Regions (ALES) software, was used to evaluate the capability and suitability for some selected fruit trees (date palm, fig, olive and citrus), vegetable crops (watermelon, tomato, potato) and field crops (wheat, maize, barely, alfalfa). This software was adapted under Egyptian conditions. Therefore, ASLE software was selected in order to make strategies related to land capability and suitability evaluation at a regional level. Soil morphological and analytical data were carried out for 20 soil profiles. Land capability classes range from Fair (C3) to Non Agriculture area (C6). On the other hand, land suitability for selected fruit trees show that the date palm, Fig and Olive were high (S1) to suitable (S2) in most soils. On the contrary, citrus was permanently none suitable in these soils. The selected vegetable crops range from highly suitable to permanently none suitable. Selected field crops range from suitable (S2) to permanently none suitable (N2). Overall capability and suitability are recognized by the ALES software in preference to interpolation by IDW in ArcGIS to produce the maps. In this paper, the main recognized soil limitation factors were texture, soil salinity and calcium carbonate content.