DIGITAL MAPPING OF LANDSCAPES BASED ON SOIL MORPHOLOGY IN THE PLAIN OF LOWER-CHELIFF (ALGERIA): APPLICATION OF REMOTE-SENSING

The Plain of Lower-Cheliff is one of the most studied north Algerian areas in terms of soil and water dynamics either in space or in time but it is very poor in term of landscapes mainly those related to vegetation. Here in this brief study we used a digital elevation model to detect the soil morphology of our study area mainly slopes and altitudes then to extract and classify the different landscape patterns using the method of supervised classification applied on a satellite imagery of LANDSAT TM type to present the spatial distribution ofthe main morpho-landscpaes in a digital spatial map. The resulted classes from the image are mainly: cereal -crops, tree crops, garden-crops to the east side of the area also, halophytes and bare soils to the west side. The digital elevation model shows that the variation of elevation is not that important as the slope but it is still the one that controls the distribution of landscapes in the plain according to the overlay, elevation/landscapes: halophytes and bare soils locate in low altitudes commonly called depressions following the soil salinity concentration at this level, other crops locate in mid to high altitudes away from soil salinity that endangers agricultural practices in the area, finally we can say that the spatial distribution of any landscape in the area is directly related to soil dynamics and characteristics.

Landscape, soil morphology, salinity, satellite image, digital map, Lower-Cheliff

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