Land Use / Land Cover Impact on Soil Quality In Selected Soil of Kirkuk

• Ali Adil Mohammad 1* Dalshad Rasool Azeez2*

  Author

The study area falls within the administrative boundaries of Kirkuk Governorate in northeastern Iraq, extending from 43°16′6.37″–44°43′6.58″ E longitudes and 34°41′5.42″–35°51′34.49″ N latitudes (Photo-figure).It includes the districts of Dibis and Daquq + sub-districts Shwan and Taza which differ according to their land-use patterns.

Soil pedons Four soil pedons were selected from four different land-use systems, including the following: (1) forest land (Pedon 1) at Dibis; (2) vegetable-crop land(Pedon 2), Taza site which had been used for growing beans and eggplantsclinical diagnosis of type Diabetes mellitus);(3)d Field crop lands cultivated with wheat, barley, maize three forelements-Pedon. These included surface horizon soil samples from each pedon, selected physical and chemical properties of soils. Cornell University Soil Quality Assessment Framework was used to evaluate the soil quality according to land-use type.

Results showed a clear differences in aggregate stability of the four pedons from both land-use systems. The Soil Quality Index (SQI) values ranged from 51.54 to 61.34, all the study sites showed a moderate-high level of soil quality but variation in their performance was determinate because of both vegetation cover and land management practices. Forest soils had the greatest SQIs (61.34) among these sites and are thus, associated with better soil quality than other site types studied here. On the other hand, SQI values of vegetable-crop soils were approximately 7.08 units lower than those for forest soils (SQI value = 52.49). The SQI was the lowest in field-crop soils (51.54), indicating that these soils were affected to a greater extent by management and agricultural practices, respectively. The SQIs computed for rangelands, ranked at 52.50 and nearly equal to Soils under vegetable-crops systems indicating that the state of soil quality on Ranjaleis soils is fairly similar with respect to higher One Land-use sys

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