The Status of Temporal Changes in Land Suitability for Wheat Production in Musayeb Project Irrigated from Central Iraq Using GIS

Abstract

Musayeb project in Babylon province has been selected in middle of Iraq to represent the irrigated area in order to study land suitability for wheat production and their temporal changes during 1994 - 2013.Soils of Musayeb project consist of undeveloped belong ,mainly to Entisols order with about 97% from the total area of the project , while the Arid soils occupied about 3 % from the total area .Data about the soils of the project has been collected from previous pedagogical soil survey works done in 1994 and resampling for soil has been done in 2013 in order to show the temporal changes in land suitability values .Land suitability evaluation values are determined according to Sys et.al.1993 and FAO,1985 to soil depth of 100 cm .The results indicate that soil units have high suitability up to 85 % from the total area of the project and within S1 class in 1994. While , 13% of the total area is unsuitable for wheat production which represent N1and N2 classes due to the effect of salt accumulation. Also , the results show that all soil units have low organic carbon content which affect land suitability values. Land suitability values are temporally improved from 1994 to 2013 due to the effect of land management practices leading to decrease salinity level and increase land suitability for wheat production .

Keywords

• soil
• temporal changes
• land suitability
• wheat production