2. Materials used
The soil maps of Egypt [2] are the main materials collected and converted to the digital format. The
collected soil maps cover the arable land, the fringes between the alluvial Nile Delta and the Desert fringes.
The collected maps consist of a number of 12 map sheets at scale of 1: 100,000 in analogue format, covering
the whole of Nile Delta region. Topographic maps at scale 1: 50,000 covering the whole course of Nile
Delta, produced by the Egyptian General Survey Authority (EGSA) were converted to a digital format.
Satellite ETM images of 2004, covering the whole territory of Egypt amount 64 scenes. A number of
seven scenes, covering the Nile Delta, were collected and processed to be included in the GIS land resources
database and be used in thematic mapping processes. The recent SPOT images of 2006 were obtained from
NARSS receiving station, and processed for updating different thematic maps and detecting changes in land
use land cover.
The Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) images of 30 pixel size resolution, in addition to driven
Digital Elevation Module (DEM) for the study area and its surrounding were consulted to represent the area
landscape [3] and [4].