Spatial variation of soil carbon and nitrogen pools by using ordinary Kriging method in an area of north Nile Delta, Egypt

• Soil C and N pools in Northern Nile Delta have are highly variable.
• Sand, bulk density and salinity are the most negative correlated to C and N pools.
• The lowest soil C and N pools in the study area are recorded close to Mediterranean Sea.

Nile Delta includes part of the most fertile and populated lands in the world. However, there is no accurate and reliable database about C and N pools of this region; in addition there are no published data in this regard. Spatial variation of soil C and N pools was studied based on Ordinary Kriging (OK) as a geostatistical method. This method was used for converting sampled soil C and N data to continuous maps of C and N pools in Northern part on Nile Delta, Egypt. The data revealed different levels of variability of C and N pools in the study area. The total C pool (TCP) ranged between 1.6 and 122.7 Mg/ha; while total N pool (TNP) ranged between 0.3 and 7.6 Mg/ha. Soil organic carbon pool (SOCP) ranged between 0.3 and 76.4 Mg/ha, whereas soil inorganic carbon pool (SICP) ranged between 1.2 and 90.5 Mg/ha. Soil C and N pools are the lowest in the Northern part in the study area which is close to Mediterranean Sea coast because of low organic matter inputs in addition to salinity and alkalinity.