Availability of more accurate soil's data is very limited for most areas worldwide; however, these data are very crucial for the management and sustainability of land resources. The main objectives of this work were to provide more accurate data about soil physiochemical and fertility properties and their spatial variability within the studied area northern of Nile-Delta in Egypt. Therefore 19 representative soil profiles were dug throughout the studied area. Fifty-nine soil samples were collected from the identified horizons and these samples were analyzed for their soil physiochemical and fertility properties. The inverse distant weighting (IDW) approach was used in developing the spatial interpolation maps of these properties. The obtained results revealed that the studied soil physiochemical and fertility properties were highly associated with soil parent material. Coarse-textured soils developed on sand dunes were higher in their bulk density and total carbonates; whereas they were lower in total porosity, saturation percentage (SP), organic matter (OM), CEC and NPK. On the contrary, fine-textured soils developed on Nile-silt deposits were higher in their total porosity, SP, OM, CEC and NPK. It was also found that one third of the studied soils were affected by soil salinity. Areas affected by soil-alkalinity due to magnesium were larger than those caused by sodium. This could be attributed to their proximity from the lakes in the area and/ or see water intrusion. Accordingly, the studied area was affected by soil salinity and poor fertility which needs to the application of proper management and sustainability programs.
Keywords: land resources, soil analysis, soil salinity, soil sodicity, Nile-delta, Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW), GIS