Sustainable multivariate analysis for land use management in El-Sharkiya, Egypt

Abstract

In Egypt, major sustainability variables could be identified as scarce of soil and water resources, environmental degradation, rapid population growth, institutional arrangement that includes land tenure and farm fragmentation, agricultural administration, lack of infrastructure, and credit utilization. The main objective of the current work is to evaluate the sustainable land use management (SLM) model through biophysics and socioeconomic elements for the purpose of combating sustainability constraints that preclude the agricultural development geospatially. In this research, from the geomorphologic point of view, the obtained results showed three main landscapes. They were identified in the study area as: fluviolacustrine plain, Aeolian deposits, and flood plain. The study area was dominated by some physical and chemical degradation processes with different scales breaking down the equilibrium of soil stability. The SLM model was implemented and assessed from multivariate perspective points of productivity, security, protection, economic viability, and social acceptability. Four SLM classes were outlined as follows: class I, land management practices that did meet sustainability requirements with a score ≥0.65, which represented 31.0 % of the considered agricultural study area; class II, land management practices that were marginally above the sustainability threshold and represented 12.6 %; class III, land management practices that were slightly below the threshold of sustainability and represented 8.60 %; class IV, land management practices that did not meet sustainability requirements with index values >0.1 that represented 47.86 %. As a general conclusion, it is found that land management practices tend to be unsustainable in the area under investigation for certain constraints that play motivated roles in lowering the targeted land sustainability.