Published in Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy, Vol. LXV, Issue 1
Written by Assim Shabeeb AbdulHussein ABDULHUSSEIN, Mircea MIHALACHE
This study aimed to monitor, map and assess the salinity of land in southern Iraq. Where the country suffers greatly from land degradation and desertification problems, especially in the central and southern parts. This study was conducted to monitor the manifestations of salinity in the Najmi area located within the administrative boundaries of the Muthanna Governorate, which has an area of (2066 hectares) and lies between longitudes 44°21ʹ0ʺ to 44°31ʹ0ʺ East and latitude circles 30°11ʹ0ʺ to 32°27ʹ0ʺ North with the help of remote sensing technology through the use of satellite images from the Landsat 8 satellite with field observations. A map of soil units was prepared using Erdas software, Arc GIS for processing, management and analysis of raster and subject data sets. Soil samples were taken from each site for physical and chemical analysis, and the study is summarized as follows: the results indicated when using the spectral index represented by the standard difference index of vegetation cover (NDVI), whose value ranged between (0.47-0.30). It was found that the study area suffers from a lack of vegetation cover by (64%); as for the salinity index values, they ranged between (-0.30-0.49) and therefore the study area suffers from a chemical deterioration represented in the salinity of the soil estimated at (69%); where the values of the dry lands index ranged between (1.37-0.73), and the desertified lands within the study area by (45%); as for the land degradation index, its value ranged from (0.00 to 99.60), and the percentage of degraded lands was estimated at (60%) of the total study lands.
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