A Developed GIS-based Land Evaluation Model for Agricultural Land Suitability Assessments in Arid and Semi Arid Regions

In the study an attempt is made at deciding the best agricultural land use in a study area located in the western part of the Nile Delta in Egypt. The area covers approximately 14,194 hectares and consists mostly of uncultivated land. The Agricultural Land Evaluation System for arid and semi-arid regions, ALESarid-GIS, was developed and used as a GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis in order to assess the agricultural land capability and suitability, and to develop wheat and maize yield prediction. The development of ALESarid-GIS is based on the main factors affecting agricultural soil suitability and productivity in arid and semi-arid regions. As input, the model requires soil data, and for an assessment of the study area a total of 58 representative soil profiles were used for collecting soil samples. The data on land capability resulting from the developed model indicated that with respect to cultivation 3.96% of the area is classified as Fair, 68.46% is Poor and 27.58% is Very Poor. The main reason for the low levels of land capability is very poor soil fertility. According to the crop suitability results, the most suitable crops to grow in the study area are alfalfa, barley, wheat, sugar beet, onion, and pear, in the order indicated. The yield prediction results indicated that wheat yield varies between 3.02 tons/ha and 4.52 tons/ha. Only one value for maize was found (6.05 ton/ha) amongst the all of investigated soil profiles.