Assessment of Soil Fertility Status under Soil Degradation Rate Using Geomatics in West Nile Delta

The presence of a noticeable rate of degradation in the land of the Nile Delta reduces the efficiency of crop production and hinders supply of the increasing demand of its growing population. For this purpose, knowledge of soil resources and their agricultural potential is important for determining their proper use and appropriate management. Thus, we investigated the state of soil fertility by understanding the effect of the physical and chemical properties of the soil and their impact on the state of land degradation for the years 1985, 2002 (ancillary data), and 2021 (our investigation). The study showed that there are clear changes in the degree of soil salinity as a result of agricultural management, water conditions, and climatic changes. The soil fertility is obtained in four classes: Class one (I) represents soils of a good fertility level with an area of about 39%. Class two (II) includes soils of an average fertility level, on an area of about 7%. Class three (III) includes soils with a poor level of fertility, with an area of about 17%. Class four (IV) includes soils of a very poor level of fertility with an area of about 37% of the total area. Principal component analysis (PCA) has revealed that the parameters that control fertility in the studied soils are: C/N, pH, Ca, CEC, OM, P, and Mg. Agro-pedo-ecological units are important units for making appropriate agricultural decisions in the long term, which contribute to improving soil quality and thus increasing the efficiency of soil fertility processes

Utilizing the Google Earth Engine for Agricultural Drought Conditions and Hazard Assessment Using Drought Indices in the Najd Region, Sultanate of Oman

Accurately evaluating drought and its effects on the natural environment is difficult in regions with limited climate monitoring stations, particularly in the hyper-arid region of the Sultanate of Oman. Rising global temperatures and increasing incidences of insufficient precipitation have turned drought into a major natural disaster worldwide. In Oman, drought constitutes a major threat to food security. In this study, drought indices (DIs), such as temperature condition index (TCI), vegetation condition index (VCI), and vegetation health index (VHI), which integrate data on drought streamflow, were applied using moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform to monitor agricultural drought and assess the drought risks using the drought hazard index (DHI) during the period of 2001–2023. This approach allowed us to explore the spatial and temporal complexities of drought patterns in the Najd region. As a result, the detailed analysis of the TCI values exhibited temporal variations over the study period, with notable minimum values observed in specific years (2001, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021), and there was a discernible trend of increasing temperatures from 2014 to 2023 compared to earlier years. According to the VCI index, several years, including 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, were characterized by mild drought conditions. Except for 2005 and 2007, all studied years were classified as moderate drought years based on the VHI index. The Pearson correlation coefficient analysis (PCA) was utilized to observe the correlation between DIs, and a high positive correlation between VHI and VCI (0.829, p < 0.01) was found. Based on DHI index spatial analysis, the northern regions of the study area faced the most severe drought hazards, with severity gradually diminishing towards the south and east, and approximately 44% of the total area fell under moderate drought risk, while the remaining 56% was classified as facing very severe drought risk. This study emphasizes the importance of continued monitoring, proactive measures, and effective adaptation strategies to address the heightened risk of drought and its impacts on local ecosystems and communities

Horses show individual level lateralisation when inspecting an unfamiliar and unexpected stimulus.

Animals must attend to a diverse array of stimuli in their environments. The emotional valence and salience of a stimulus can affect how this information is processed in the brain. Many species preferentially attend to negatively valent stimuli using the sensory organs on the left side of their body and hence the right hemisphere of their brain. Here, we investigated the lateralisation of visual attention to the rapid appearance of a stimulus (an inflated balloon) designed to induce an avoidance reaction and a negatively valent emotional state in 77 Italian saddle horses. Horses' eyes are laterally positioned on the head, and each eye projects primarily to the contralateral hemisphere, allowing eye use to be a proxy for preferential processing in one hemisphere of the brain. We predicted that horses would inspect the novel and unexpected stimulus with their left eye and hence right hemisphere. We found that horses primarily inspected the balloon with one eye, and most horses had a preferred eye to do so, however, we did not find a population level tendency for this to be the left or the right eye. The strength of this preference tended to decrease over time, with the horses using their non-preferred eye to inspect the balloon increasingly as the trial progressed. Our results confirm a lateralised eye use tendency when viewing negatively emotionally valent stimuli in horses, in agreement with previous findings. However, there was not any alignment of lateralisation at the group level in our sample, suggesting that the expression of lateralisation in horses depends on the sample population and testing context