Role of remote sensing and GIS in Irrigation is as discussed below:
1) Identifying lanuse land cover pattern:
➡ Remote sensing & GIS technologies can make a significant contribution in collecting land use data, particularly preparing accurate land cover map.
Such a map then permit better understanding of land utilization aspect i.e. cropping pattern, fallow lands, waste land and surface water bodies.
➡ The use of multitemporal data helps in detecting the changes in land cover and also monitoring these changes at regular interval.
➡ The remotely sensed data can also help in detecting changes in land cover and also in monitoring these changes at regular interval.
➡ The remotely sensed data helps in detecting the changes in land cover and also in monitoring these changes at regular interval.
2) Identifying nutrient deficiency:
➡ The remotely sensed data can also help in identifying nutrient deficiency, disease, water deficiency, weed infection, insect damage, hail damage, wind damage. Such a problem within a field can be identified remotely before it can be identified visually.
➡Timely detection of pests and diseases as well as assessment of crop condition are other processes where remote sensing can play a important role.
➡ The condition assessment is carried out utilizing the multiband satellite data by dividing the area of interest into geographically referenced grid cells of appropriate size.
➡ The stressed plants in a field can be identified by establishing their spectral signature and that of healthy plants.
➡ The spectral signature of stressed plants appears altered as compared to that of healthy plants.
3) Identifying water depth for crop:
If a crop gets an insufficient water supply from the soil, the surface temperature of the crop will increase and this increase can be detected by measuring the radiance in the thermal region of electromagnetic spectrum.
4) Identifying cropping pattern:
➡ A crop type can be identified in a remote sensing image by its spectral response pattern and by the image texture.
The remote sensing data, if suitably complemented with ground truth and sample surveys can provide a valuable input in acreage and yield estimation of major crops.
➡ Crop acreage estimation is an area which requires a quantitative use of subtle differences in spectral data.
Thus digital image processing for acreage estimation consists of :-
- Identifying the representative sites of various crops on the image based on ground observations.
- Generating signatures for different representative training sites.
- Classifying the image using the training statistics.
5) Yield of crop:
➡ Yield estimation is influenced by such factors as crop genotype, soil characteristics, and cultural practices and weeds, pests and diseases.
The effects of all these are manifested in the growth of crop.
➡ The remotely sensed data can provide the parameters directly related to yield and other biometric parameters, which may be utilized as the input parameters to a yield model.
6) Identifying methods of irrigation:
Remotely sensed data and GIS data provides basic information related to type of land and its hydraulic conductivity which can be used for deciding methods of irrigation.
7) Canal operation:
➡ Water release days can be predicted by soil moisture relationship provided by GIS data.
➡ Quantity of water also can be identified by the land cover map.