The contribution of remonte sensing in the mapping, land cover and hydrology of the ouled Abdoun basin

Abstract

The Ouled Abdoun phosphate basin located in the northwest of Morocco is considered one of the largest phosphate basins in the world. It represents a major economic opportunity for Morocco and a global source of phosphate supply. The mapping of the Ouled Abdoun basin using satellite imagery, including Landsat and Aster images, and the application of indices such as NDVI and NDWI, along with the creation of maps, provides insight into the development of vegetation density and water quantity between 2000 and 2022. The application of indices such as clay, carbonates, and oxidation indicates that the basin is rich in clayey, carbonated, and marly soils. Following the mapping of the Ouled Abdoun basin, a supervised classification based on data from the SoilGrids platform indicates that the basin is rich in various types of soils such as Luvisols, cambisols, calcisols, fluvisols, regosols,and vertisols. Furthermore, the land use map of the Ouled Abdoun basin shows that the majority of the surface area is made up of cultivated lands. The hydrological study of the Ouled Abdoun basin for the calculation of the annual volume of water pumped from the groundwater shows that each year, approximately 3.232 billion cubic meters of water are consumed for irrigation in the Ouled Abdoun basin.