Present and Future Agricultural Applications of EO Data in India
- Paper number
IAC-07-B1.5.02
- Author
Dr. Sushma Panigrahy, Space Applications Centre (SAC), ISRO, India
- Coauthor
Dr. M.V.R. Seshasai, National Remote Sensing Agency, India
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Agriculture has been the thrust application of earth observation data in India in view of the dominant agrarian system with 142.6 million ha of net sown area (46.6 per cent of country’s geographical area), supporting more than 60 per cent population. Starting with the first satellite of the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) Series IRS-1A to the upcoming radar satellite RISAT, the Indian EO sensors have kept pace with the requirement and changing need of this sector of the country. Some of the important operational agricultural applications using EO data are crop production forecasting, agricultural system studies, horticulture development and management planning and water resources development and management. Techniques for district level pre-harvest production forecast of important cereal, fiber, oilseed crops using IRS LISS senor (I, II, III) have been developed and used operationally for the last two decades. For the last one decade, multiple assessment of the production of wheat is being carried out using temporal data of IRS AWiFS. Procedure has been developed to use C band SAR data for rice production forecasting. Assessment of agricultural sustainability by cropping system approach has been carried out and maps generated on the current cropping pattern, crop rotation. Site suitability for important horticultural crops have been made to meet the requirement of the “Technology Mission on Horticulture” programme. Integration of EO data with hydrological models have been used for sustainable water use planning and decision support system for irrigation management. Spatial pattern of land degradation in terms of soil erosion, salinity, water logging has been assessed, and formed as an input for remedial measures. Procedure has been developed to estimate methane emission from rice lands as per the guideline procedure of IPCC using EO inputs. The Net Primary Productivity of agro-ecosystems is also assessed using these data. Thus, at present, EO data has been successfully utilized to cater to important information need in Indian agriculture sector. In the scenario of globalisation and commerialisation, the needs of the agricultural sector are also changing. The requirements are crop diversification, management planning of dry land agriculture, site-specific management, crop insurance, contract farming, impact assessment of global climate change etc. Spatial domain simulation models are the answer now replacing the statistical approaches. The most important thing is that, these applications need synergistic use of various kinds of EO data, instead of any single data source. This calls for a new strategy of EO data collection and synthesis, new algorithms and products The new sensors envisaged are hyperspectral, atmospheric correction, multi-angular observation, multi-parameter SAR, and high temporal data in optical, thermal and microwave regions including scatterometer, radiometer etc. Data from weather satellites and geo-synchronous platforms are going to play a significant role as they are essential inputs in simulation models This would need development of algorithms for retrieval of parameters like Leaf Area Index, biomass, fAPAR, Net Primary Productivity, land surface temperature, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, albedo etc. Assimilation of RS derived physical and biophysical parameters in process based simulation models to assess short-term and long-term crop productivity and land sustainability is envisaged.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
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