Agricultural Sustainability Evaluation of the New Reclaimed Soils at Dairut Area, Assiut, Egypt using GIS Modeling
Yasser A. Sayed, Mohamed E. Fadl
Abstract
Agricultural sustainability development is essential in the modest Egyptian national income to improve land production and conservation of natural resources, which must cope with population growth with addition of new land reclamation that has lot of sustainability obstacles confrontation agricultural development such as; soil characteristics, alkalinity and salinity limitation, socio-economic factors, soil type and other environmental hazards. This study aims to evaluate agricultural sustainability status and potentiality according to integration of biophysical, economic viability and social acceptability at Dairut area using sustainable agricultural framework and Designed Sustainable Potentiality Spatial Model (DSPSM). Sustainability framework is includes five factors; productivity, security, protection, economic viability and social acceptability. Productivity index ranged between 0.41 and 0.90, protection factors were characterized by value index ranging from 0.77 to 0.95, security factors is ranged from 0.39 to 0.95, economic viability index ranged between 0.65 and 0.90 and social acceptability varied from 0.66 to 0.86. It recorded a highly significant positive correlation (P < 0.05) between productivity index and economy index (r = 0.832), and positive significant correlation (P < 0.05) between one to other sustainability factors. The investigated area is classified into four classes; S1, S2, S3 and S4 according to sustainable agricultural framework. DSPSM model classified the study area into three classes; class 1, class 2 and class 3. The study area region has suffered from some omission in local infrastructure, health facilities and education.