DEVELOPMENT OF SOIL/GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM FROM AVAILABLE NON – REGISTERED HARD COPY MAPS IN EGYPT

Document Type : Research articles.

Author

Remote Sensing & GIS unit, Soil, Water, and Environment Research Institute

Abstract

The Soil, Water, and Environment Research Institute
(SWERI), Agricultural Research
Center, Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation in
Egypt has acquired large data sets for soil characteristics, soil
classification, and soil suitability for agricultural purposes.
Such data have been collected for large areas of Egypt in
hardcopy format with various scales ranging from 1: 50000 to 1:
250000 over a long period of time.
Unfortunately, these valuable soil maps have been developed
in hard copy maps that did not contain any information regarding
datum, map projection, or coordinate system. Some of these soil
maps contain few topographic features background (River Nile,
shore line, few canals or drains).
Others do not contain any topographic features at all and share
only an overlap area with other maps, preventing the usage of
such huge valuable data.
A new approach has been adopted to transform the soil maps
and data into a usable geo-reference format utilizing GIS tools.
All soil maps are scanned and transformed to raster format.
Topographic data sets with scales 1: 50000 and 1: 250000 sharing
the same coverage of soil maps have been digitized and
transformed to a comprehensive topographic GIS database, which
are then used for raster soil maps geo-referencing.
Then the on screen digitizing process is performed to develop < br />a soil GIS database for large area of Egypt, including various soil
parameters and characteristics. On this basis, the available maps
and soil data could be collected in one data set, allowing for
comprehensive soil investigation analysis and planning as well as
establishing a base reference for change detection throughout
various decades utilizing available remote sensing satellite images
and soil data at SWERI in the future research.


Keywords