Effect of groundwater salinity level on soil using remote sensing and GIS techniques: case study of southwest of Basra Province

Groundwater salinity level is one of the most important considerations for monitoring soil degradation that threat some regions in the southwest of Basra Province, Iraq. The aim of this research is to assign the appropriate and effective image processing techniques to be implemented for monitoring, and then to evaluate groundwater salinity level map. Landsat TM 2000 and ETM 2015 images respectively have been selected, as well as ancillary data of the available salinity field measurements have been used. Spatial overlay analysis between salt affected areas and water table were made to assess spatial distribution as well as relationships with these features. The result shows that about 47.8% of the areas were low-saline in 2000. This gradually decreased to 35.9% in 2015. Large area change was observed in the slightly and moderately saline soil categories. High sensitive areas of saline soil were about 13.3% in 2000 and this increased to 19.4% in 2015. Areas highly vulnerable to salinization were related to the groundwater salinity level that normally occurred on the soil sediment in this location of study