International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensin
area. The quantitative data mainly comprised slope
angle, slope length and direction of ploughing; and
the main type of qualitative data used was the
presence or absence of rills.
The proportion of fields with rills was compared to
the mean predicted soil loss for different classes of
fields using a simple chi-square test. Not enough
support was found that predicted soil loss and the
presence or absence of rilling might be related.
The reasons for the weak support for the application
of the model are thought to be due to: 1) time lag
between the prediction of soil losses (1992) and the
field measurements (1999), 2) positioning errors
surrounding the geographical locations of the fields
and the pixels in the raster GIS, 3) potential
mismatches between field sizes and pixel size, 4) the
qualitative and partial nature of the field evidence
used to compare with predicted soil loss. The biggest
issue here probably lies in comparing a qualitative
observation with a numerical prediction.
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6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was sponsored by the UK government and
the BRDP (Jordan). I wish to thank my research
associate Prof. Andrew C. Millington from Leicester
University, for helping in structuring the project. My
compliments go to the Director General of the RIGC,
Engineer Saleem Khalifah for his continuous support
to accomplish this research. I must acknowledge the
help of the BRDP Director, Engineer Mohammad
Shahbaz, for backing and encouraging this research
from the beginning. My acknowledgements go to the
United Arab Emirates University, my actual place of
work, for allowing me to attend the XXth ISPRS
Congress in Istanbul, Turkey to present my findings
and results.