Soil Mineralogy of North Western Desert, Egypt

El Ghonamey, Yousif Kotb; Abdellatif, Abdellatif Deyab; Abdel Ghaffar, Mamdouh Khalil

doi:10.21608/ejss.2020.48740.1407

Soil Mineralogy of North Western Desert, Egypt

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Soils, Water and Environment Research Institute (SWERI) - ARC

² Soil, Water and Environment Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Egypt

³ Remote sensing and GIS Unit, SWERI, ARC

10.21608/ejss.2020.48740.1407

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to study the mineralogical characteristics in an area north of the Western Desert, Egypt to give an idea about origin and genesis of soils as well as their uniformity and weathering. The study area divided into four main geomorphological units: terraces, escarpment, structural platform and sand accumulation. The sand fraction consists of light and heavy minerals. The light minerals are the main constituent of sand fraction and consists mainly of quartz (≥ 92 %) followed by feldspars (plagioclase and orthoclase) in addition to muscovite and calcite minerals. The heavy minerals consist of opaques and non-opaques. Opaque minerals are the major heavy fraction constituent and composed essentially of iron oxide minerals. The complementary non-opaque minerals consist of:(a) Sedimentary origin minerals, which also named ultrastable or index minerals, are mostly dominating the non-opaque minerals. (b) Igneous origin minerals or unstable minerals are the second abundance minerals. (c) Metamorphic origin minerals or metastable (index) minerals are detected in considerable portions. The vertical distribution of the index minerals and the uniformity ratio values in the studied soils change irregularly depth wise. This indicates that these soils were formed from materials of multi-origin. The clay minerals could be present as a result of inheritance from parent material by alteration, degradation of primary minerals and addition. The variation in the relative content of the present clay minerals may be attributed mainly to sedimentation regime varieties (e.g. recycling from different sedimentary precursors) and /or to the nature of the source rocks.

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