Evaluation of the Chemical Properties of the Soil in the Saadiya District Using Laboratory Analysis and Geographic Information Systems

Abstract

This research aims to evaluate the chemical properties of the soil in the Saadiya subdistrict located northeast of Diyala Governorate, and to identify its mineral components and nutrients in the soil, which contributes to understanding the soil composition and its impact on agricultural production. Its chemical properties are influenced by several factors such as climate, the type of parent rocks, and human activity. This study addresses several important chemical properties including organic matter, which plays an important role in improving the soil environment and its retention of water and nutrients, pH level which determines the acidity or alkalinity of the soil and directly affects the availability of nutrients to plants, electrical conductivity which affects soil salinity, the availability of soluble salts that influence plant growth, and negative and positive ions. Detecting these elements required laboratory analyses to accurately determine their properties through the integration of soil laboratory analysis and Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. The results showed that the organic matter content in the study area's soil is low, ranging between (0.4-1.3), attributed to the sparse vegetation cover in the area. It was also found that the soil in the area is moderately to strongly alkaline, with pH values in all samples ranging closely between (7.30-8.21). The research concluded that the integration of laboratory analysis and spatial analysis tools in GIS represents an effective tool for identifying chemical soil problems and establishing a spatial database that can be relied upon in land resource management and sustainable agricultural use planning in the Saadiya subdistrict.