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Partnerships for enhanced engagement in research (PEER) SCIENCE
Cycle 1 (2011 Deadline)

Spectral soil mapping for agricultural land development in El- Gallaba Plain, Western Desert, Egypt   

PI: El Sayed Abbas Zaghloul, National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences 
U.S. Partner:  Magaly Koch, Boston University
Project Dates: May 2012 - December 2013 
 
Project Overview

Ensuring food security and sustainable growth are among the top priorities of the Egyptian government. Major programs have been undertaken in the last decades to relieve population pressure along the narrow Nile Valley, increase Egypt’s arable land, and generate new employment opportunities, especially for young people. One significant step toward accomplishing these goals is the selection of suitable sites for urban and agricultural development. Remote sensing technology has made timely and spatially explicit information gathering possible with a wide variety of sensors operating in the optical and microwave region of the solar spectrum. Despite the increasing level of sophistication of these sensors, field information is a required component of any remote sensing study to ensure proper calibration and validation of data.
 
This project worked with an existing U.S.-Egyptian project involving field surveys (including ground penetrating radar and soil and water sampling for lab analysis) in the El-Gallaba Plain, bounded in the east by the River Nile and in the west by the scarp face of the Sin El-Kaddab Plateau. Although soil maps exist for this region from the time when the Aswan High Dam was constructed in the 1960s, these maps do not cover the area in sufficient detail. The project addressed this problem by producing a detailed surface sediment and soil map that will provide a basis for assessing and monitoring soil types and conditions and their suitability for urban and agricultural development. The researchers conducted a spectral soil mapping campaign in conjunction with other ongoing field surveys and created a library of representative surface materials to be used in conjunction with present and future satellite sensors to spatially map the distribution of soils and surface sediments. The library will be made available to the public and used for a training workshop in spectral mapping techniques. 

Final Summary of Project Activities

Four technical and scientific meetings were held between Egyptian research teams to determine the study area. An additional technical meeting was held between the Egyptian team and the U.S. partner to discuss the field survey groups.

The team held two workshops at the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences in 2013. The first demonstrated the techniques and methodology used during the project, as well as soil mapping and soil classifications in the study area and water resources available for agricultural development. The second presented results from the project as well as additional technical presentations on SAR and GPR methods, and research into groundwater exploration in the KomOmbo area.

The project also supported two training courses – GPR Survey and Data Analysis and Modeling and Spectro-radiometer Survey and Data Analysis and Imaging. The Egyptian Ministry of Resources expressed interest in the project results and data in the exploration of underground water.

Publications

Multisensor characterization of subsurface structures in a desert plain area in Egypt with implications for groundwater exploration. Magaly Koch, Ahmed Gaber, Mohamed Helmi Gereish, El-Sayed Abbas Zaghloul, Sayed M. Arafat, and Mostafa Abubakr. Remote Sensing for Agriculture, Ecosystems and Hydrology XV, SPIE conference, Dresden, Germany, September 2013, Volume 8887.

Mapping of surface and subsurface in West Kom Ombo, The upper Nile Valley, using remote sensing techniques. El-Sayed Abbas Zaghloul and Sayed M. Arafat. National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, Cairo, Egypt. Presented Paper, 7th International Conference on the Geology of Africa, November 2013, Assiut, Egypt.


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