SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT USING SPATIAL ANALYST IN NORTH NILE DELTA SOIL, EGYPT

Sustainable land management (SLM) in agriculture is a complex topic that incorporates many features, including biophysical, socioeconomic and environmental factors. To integrate land productivity, security, protection, economic viability and social acceptability indices, spatial analysis (ordinary kriging) functions in a geographic information system (GIS) were employed to estimate the sustainability index. A SLM model was designed in ArcGIS to evaluate SLM, promote production services (productivity), reduce production risks (security), reduce the pressure on natural resources and protects soil and water degradation (protection). The model was designed to be economically viable (feasibility) and to be acceptable (susceptibility).
This study aimed to evaluate sustainable agricultural land in Desouk district, north Nile Delta, Egypt, through a combination of five indices. The sustainability index data indicate that the area can be classified into three classes i.e., low and high class II areas above the threshold of sustainability and class III areas below the threshold of sustainability, representing 64%, 34% and 2% of the investigated area, respectively. It was found that most of the agricultural land in the study area tends to be marginally higher than the threshold for sustainability.