Evaluation of land resources in the main drainage basins in The North Western Coast of Egypt and Tunisia using remote sensing and GIS / Ramadan Ahmed Mahmoud Ibrahim ; Supervised Adel Saad Elhassanin , Rafat Ramadan Ali , Magdy Rizk Samak

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of African Postgraduate Studies - Department of Natural Resources

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the land resources of catchment basins in the North Western Coast of Egypt and Tunisia using remote sensing and GIS. The study area is bounded by longitudes 270 03' and 27{u00B0} 52' east and latitudes 31{u00B0} 00' and 31{u00B0} 22' north in Egypt. The investigated area in Tunis is located between longitudes 10{u00B0} 26' & 11{u00B0}11' East and latitudes 34{u00B0} 31' & 350 59' North. Remote sensing ETM+ data and DEM derived from the SRTM were used with the field observations to delineate the catchment basins over the area. The TRMM data were used to calculate water quantity stored in the different basins. The study includes 25 soil profiles morphologically described and sampled for the laboratory analyses. The results indicate that the soil texture differs from sandy to sandy clay loam, EC values changes from 1.0 to 67.7 ds/m, OM values ranged between 0.10 and 1.30 % and CaCO3 from 11.40 to 71.50 %. The area include two main orders i.e. Entisols and Aridisols including the great groups of TypicTorripasamments,TypicTorriorthents, TypicTorrifluvents,and TypicHaplocalcids. The study showed that the area was grouped into four land capability grades i.e. high capable (I) represented 3.56%, moderately capable i.e. 57.28 %, marginally capable (III) about 30.83 % and non-capable (8.23%). A total of 16 crops were selected to evaluate their suitability for cultivation in the area. The chosen crops comprise field crops (soybean, barley, sunflower, sorghum and wheat), vegetables crops (potato, cabbage, tomato, pea and watermelon), fodder crops: alfalfa and cowpea), and fruits (olive, citrus, panama and guava)

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