Suitability of Soil Potentialities and Land Use Using GIS Tool: Case Study of Monastir Tunisia Region

Soil resources are increasingly scarce quantitatively and qualitatively in the face of recent environmental change in the western Mediterranean basin. Land use in the agricultural sector needs to be appropriately reasoned and planned toward ensuring soil sustainability and food security. In this way, evaluation of the soil potentialities could help to ensure the suitable agronomic vocation of land. The present work proposes to evaluate the soil potentialities of the governorate of Monastir-Tunisia, through the Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Comparative analysis between current Monastir soil land use and the generated maps was investigated. Results provide the possibility to elaborate theoretical occupation of the soil according to its features and the requirements of the crops (arboriculture, market gardening, cereals) through the map of current land use, the physical potentialities of the soil and the map of the agronomic vocation. The obtained results showed that in irrigated mode, 56% of the Monastir soils have a very high agricultural potentiality and 32% have an average agricultural potentiality. However, in rainfed mode, 36% of the soils have an average potentiality and 38% low agricultural potentiality. The comparison between the potentiality in rainfed and irrigated mode shows that the major constraint is the water resource especially that there is a major part of the soil of the zone studied is of good quality. Results of the superposition of land use and soil potentialities maps indicate the limits of current land use in this area, which in several cases does not conform to its real vocation. Overall, this study demonstrates that the evaluation of soil potential represents a great interest in improving land use and ensuring efficient and sustainable soil exploitation.