Mapping arable soils using GIS‐based soil information database in Kuwait

A soil information system was developed to manage soil survey data and to ensure that soil information is readily available to support land use planning and development. The Soil Information System combined spatial information management of a Geographical Information System (GIS) with the textural information management of a relational database management system. The GIS is capable of manipulating and displaying area and point data with the logical framework of a database to store data for interpretation. The main objective of this paper was to demonstrate one of the approaches to utilize and interpret data from the soil information system for identifying soil suitable for irrigated agriculture. The design and implementation of the soil information system are discussed, and an example of system output, such as mapping soils suitable for irrigated agricultural, is presented in this paper. For mapping these areas, a criterion was defined to select potential areas for irrigated agriculture. The criterion was applied to each of the soil property classes and subclasses to determine the most limiting rating for each soil. The rating was applied to map units and was allocated by the geographic soil map units in the GIS to produce a suitability map for irrigated agricultural areas in Kuwait. The soil information for the State of Kuwait provided information in a digitized format that can be further extended to interpret other land uses.