Impacts of land-use changes and landholding fragmentation on crop water demand and drought in Wadi El-Farigh, New Delta project, Egypt

Abstract

Despite Egypt’s limited water resources, more lands in the western desert of the Nile Delta are currently being reclaimed to increase the agricultural area to feed its fast-growing population and provide jobs for new generations. These reclaimed lands are prone to drought since they are located in arid regions with limited water resources for irrigation. Moreover, a high rate of landholdings fragmentation was observed with the migration of large numbers of new farmers to the newly reclaimed areas. Hence, the current work uses remote sensing data to investigate the impacts of landholdings fragmentation and land-use changes on irrigation water demand and drought propagation in two selected sites in Wadi El-Farigh area, one of the newly reclaimed valleys in the western desert of Egypt. To achieve that goal, high-resolution satellite images were used to quantify the land-use changes and patterns. The Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) was used to estimate the actual evapotranspiration (ETa) from 2010 to 2020. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Evaporative Stress Index (ESI) were used to monitor drought. Results indicated a large transformation of seasonal herbaceous crops to tree-fruit crops in the two study sites. However, landholding fragmentation caused a reduction in the total cultivated area and thus the accumulated water consumption over one study site. Although the accumulated ETa decreased following the decline in the total cultivated area, the ETa rate per hectare increased by 18.4% and 19.6% for trees and herbaceous crops, respectively, reflecting the negative impact of climate change. ESI and SPI time series confirms that the area became extremely dry, particularly after 2017. In conclusion, land use and climate change increased crop water demand, while landholding fragmentation led to cropland loss. Hence, more policies for land protection and adaptation strategies to climate change are essentially needed.