Land evaluation for crop production in the Banger El-Sokkar region of Egypt using a geographic information system and ALES-arid model

Abstract: The best agricultural land use in the study area of the Banger El-Sokkar region aim this study was determined by evaluating the characteristics of the soil using a geographic information system (GIS) and the ALES-arid evaluation program. This information plays an important role in choosing the most suitable crops that can be grown in this study area. The ALES-arid program aims to evaluate the fitness of different land types to produce different crops (field crops, vegetables, forage crops, and fruit trees) to identify the optimum land use based on some pedological variables, such as soil salinity, soil depth, soil reaction (pH), calcium carbonate and soil texture, which are mandatory input factors for crop cultivation. A total of forty-six soil observations were made, covering a total area of 7074.34 ha. The results indicated that the investigated soils were mainly classified as C2, C3 and C4. The quantitative approach given by (FAO, 1976) has also been used to classify areas on the basis of their capability, ranging from good capability (5700.2 ha) to poor capability (500.62 ha) to very poor capability (443.77 ha). Different land suitability classes and indices for several crops were predicted based on the matching between the land qualities and characteristics and crop standard requirements using the ALES-arid program. Classifying the lands on the basis of their suitability, the ranked classes were S1, S2, S3, S4, NS1 and NS2. Finally, all the data obtained were input into ArcGIS software to map the spatial distributions of the different suitability classes.