الفهرس 
Role of Land Resources for Agricultural Development in El-Moghra Area, Western Desert, Egypt.Only 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Desert agricultural expansion based on scientific basis, is considered as a mainstay of Egypt’s national economy to take up and cope with the current economic changes. Also, Surveying and evaluating land resources have become urgent necessity in many aspects of life
for the country. Since the sound optimum planning to utilize such natural resources and bringing in the proper investment, requires that the decisions and their alternative should be based on comprehensive and precise data and information in order to obtain feasible technical and economical results.
The western desert with its location and the variant natural resources is regarded as a strategic depth of Egypt and also as the main link to the western Arab countries. Therefore, a new awareness and appreciation has remarkably grown in that a development deeply concerning the economic, social, environmental, and cultural aspects, should take place to keep the security of the whole country and to establish a pioneer model of national development. This fact necessitates an essential demand for evaluating and classifying the soil according to its agricultural productivity.
The interpretation of Landsat 8 OLI was carried out to delineate the main
physiographic features of the study area. The soil taxonomic units (at sub great group level) and field data using the GIS to determine different types of the thematic maps. Fifty soil profiles were selected to represent the study area. The soil profiles have been morphologically examined and described. Soil profiles have been sampled and their physical, chemical and
nutritional properties have been determined.
The obtained result could be summarized in the following;
The topography of the study area ranges from almost flat to rolling, where the slope ranges from level to sloping (0.2% to 10%). The soil profile depths are deep to very deep (120: 150+ cm.). The soil texture is mainly coarse texture (sand, loamy sand, or sandy loam).
The electrical conductivity of the soil saturation extracts differs from 0.5 dSm-1to 14.48 dSm1, except some soil profiles are highly saline, having ECe values > 111.33 dSm-1. The soils are
non to slightly calcareous, where calcium carbonate content varies from 0 to 4.97 %, meanwhile highly calcareous profiles reaching to 39.73 %, gypsum was found reaching to 3.61 %. Soil reaction is moderately alkaline, sometimes alkaline, where pH values range from
6.51 to 9. The exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP) ranges from 2.13 to 55.15 %. Most of soils are poor in organic matter (reaching to 1.2 %). The cation exchange capacity (CEC),
corresponding to the predominating soil texture is low, except some soil profiles have fine texture materials. The soils, in general, poor in their available macro and micro nutrients.
According to the guidelines of American System of Soil Classification (Soil
Taxonomy, 2014), the studied area could be categorized under two orders namely; Entisols (around 72.84% of the study area) and Aridisols (around 13.16% of the study area). At sub group level, the area studied encompasses the following:
Typic Torripsamments (representing 63.08 % of the study area).
Typic Torriorthent (representing 9.76 % of the study area).
Typic Haplosalids (representing 27.15 % of the study area).
- With respect to land evaluation, four different systems have been applied for land capability, and three are related to the land suitability assessment, as follow:
61- With respect to USDA Land Capability classification system: it has been indicated that around 13.36 % of the study area belongs to class II, where the majority (86.64 %) of the study area is related to class III.
Not worthy to indicate that this system has not given any respect to many
attributes such as soil salinity, soil reaction, calcium carbonate and gypsum.
- Regarding the Land productivity classification according to Sys and Verheye (1978): around 52.44 % of the study area has moderate capability (class S3), except for only around 2.23 % is considered good capability (class S2), and the rest of the
area 45.33 % is marginal or nonproductive land (class N1). This system ignores some chemical properties, i.e., organic matter, soil reaction, cation exchange capacity and exchangeable sodium percent.