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Chintapalli, S.M.
SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING AND GIS TECHNOLOGIES TO AID
SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF INDIAN IRRIGATION SYSTEMS
S. M. Chintapalli, P. V. Raju, K. Abdul Hakeem and S. Jonna
Water Resources Group, National Remote Sensing Agency
Hyderabad 500 037 India
murthyc yahoo.com
Working group VII/2
KEY WORDS: Remote sensing, Performance analysis, Sustainable, Multi spectral, Spatial data
ABSTRACT
Increasing concern in recent years in India is on the issue of long-term prospects of irrigation and the consequences of
continuing current water management practices on the sustainability of irrigation systems which have been created with
huge financial investments. The selective studies mentioned in this paper describe the application of advanced technologies
namely Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System, which has been demonstrated recently, in many irrigation
systems in India to address the various issues relevant to sustainable management of irrigation systems. The primary
agricultural information at disaggregated level derived from the analysis of high resolution satellite data has formed the
basic input in all these studies. A set of indicators of agricultural situation over time and space were derived exclusively
from satellite data analysis and validated at grass root level irrigation units in Bhakra irrigation system, Haryana state.
Indicators of irrigation system performance such as irrigation intensity, principal crop intensity, equity in water distribution
and agricultural production per unit volume of water were developed and applied in Bhadra command area, Karnataka state.
Thus, the geo information derived from remote sensing and data analysis tools like GIS provide excellent opportunities
to measure the spatio-temporal changes in land and water productivity and to achieve sustainable management of irrigation
systems. The demonstrated capabilities would hopefully lead to more wide spread and operational use of these advanced
technologies in India and elsewhere, in the world.
1 INTRODUCTION
Development of irrigation in India has been driven by the overriding compulsion of providing food grains for a large
growing population. Massive financial investments were made in irrigation sector during the last five decades. As a result,
the irrigation potential created has gone up to 91.8 million hectares by 1997 from 22.6 million hectares in 1951. During this
period, the food grain production has risen to 198 million tonnes from 51 million tonnes and the country has achieved food
security. The large scale capital investments for irrigation development along with green revolution in agriculture has
resulted in nearly quadrupling of food grains production over a period of last five decades in India. However, during the
process of harnessing the resources certain inequalities/ imbalances/ anomalies have occurred and hence the sustainability
of present day irrigated agriculture has become doubtful. It would be almost impossible to increase the present level of food
grain production to meet the future requirement of 450 million tonnes by the year 2050, without substantially increasing
the irrigated area and managing it for sustainable optimal productivity. The achievement of sustainable management of
irrigation systems reinforces and extends the main principles of land and water management and the crux of the problem
in this direction is how best we can put these principles in practice. Evaluation of the performance of the irrigation system
in its existing form at different spatial and temporal scales and under different hydrological/ agricultural conditions is
crucial for designing and implementation of any plans to achieve sustainable management of irrigation systems. Non-
availability of objective data on agricultural situation in irrigated command areas at desired spatial level is today's major
problem for performance evaluation of the irrigation systems. In the last few years, various studies have demonstrated the
usefulness of satellite remote sensing data for generating the information on total irrigated area and area under different
crops (John et. al 1978, Kolm 1984, Nageswara Rao and Mohan Kumar, 1994), condition of crops (Williamson, 1989,
Daniel, 1989, Stone, et.al, 1994) and crop production (Pinter 1981, Hatfield 1983, Murthy et.al, 1996). The capabilities
of emerging technologies like satellite remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS), for generation and
analysis of objective information across space and time to achieve realistic evaluation of the agricultural situation and
irrigation performance of canal irrigation systems are demonstrated in this paper.
264 International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B7. Amsterdam 2000.
