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128686

Soil Mineralogy of North Western Desert, Egypt

Article

Last updated: 01 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

Soil mineralogy, engineering and technology

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to study the mineralogical characteristics in an area north of the Western Desert, Egypt to give an idea about origin and genesis of soils as well as their uniformity and weathering. The study area divided into four main geomorphological units: terraces, escarpment, structural platform and sand accumulation. The sand fraction consists of light and heavy minerals. The light minerals are the main constituent of sand fraction and consists mainly of quartz (≥ 92 %) followed by feldspars (plagioclase and orthoclase) in addition to muscovite and calcite minerals. The heavy minerals consist of opaques and non-opaques. Opaque minerals are the major heavy fraction constituent and composed essentially of iron oxide minerals. The complementary non-opaque minerals consist of:(a) Sedimentary origin minerals, which also named ultrastable or index minerals, are mostly dominating the non-opaque minerals. (b) Igneous origin minerals or unstable minerals are the second abundance minerals. (c) Metamorphic origin minerals or metastable (index) minerals are detected in considerable portions. The vertical distribution of the index minerals and the uniformity ratio values in the studied soils change irregularly depth wise. This indicates that these soils were formed from materials of multi-origin. The clay minerals could be present as a result of inheritance from parent material by alteration, degradation of primary minerals and addition. The variation in the relative content of the present clay minerals may be attributed mainly to sedimentation regime varieties (e.g. recycling from different sedimentary precursors) and /or to the nature of the source rocks.

DOI

10.21608/ejss.2020.48740.1407

Keywords

Soil mineralogy, North Western Desert, Egypt

Authors

First Name

Yousif

Last Name

El Ghonamey

MiddleName

Kotb

Affiliation

Soils, Water and Environment Research Institute (SWERI) - ARC

Email

kotby72@gmail.com

City

Giza

Orcid

-

First Name

Abdellatif

Last Name

Abdellatif

MiddleName

Deyab

Affiliation

Soil, Water and Environment Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Egypt

Email

abdellatifdeyab@yahoo.com

City

-

Orcid

0000-0003-0679-6030

First Name

Mamdouh

Last Name

Abdel Ghaffar

MiddleName

Khalil

Affiliation

Remote sensing and GIS Unit, SWERI, ARC

Email

mamdouh66swi@gmail.com

City

Giza

Orcid

-

Volume

60

Article Issue

4

Related Issue

17196

Issue Date

2020-12-01

Receive Date

2020-11-04

Publish Date

2020-12-01

Page Start

485

Page End

500

Print ISSN

0302-6701

Online ISSN

2357-0369

Link

https://ejss.journals.ekb.eg/article_128686.html

Detail API

https://ejss.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=128686

Order

45

Type

Original Article

Type Code

19

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Egyptian Journal of Soil Science

Publication Link

https://ejss.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Soil Mineralogy of North Western Desert, Egypt

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023