Abstract
Significant changes in rainfall patterns are critical to agriculture, and the dependency of cropping systems on rainfall variability would engender appropriate farming practices and agriculture policies for a climate-resilient agriculture system. This study analyses the significance of rainfall variability on agriculture productivity in the Wayanad district of Kerala (India) using time series data on rainfall (1989–2019) and crop yield (2000–2019). The spatial variability of rainfall patterns reveals a dichotomy between the rain gauge stations in the northern and southern parts of the region. Despite the absence of statistically significant trends in the monthly, seasonal and annual rainfall, based on the Mann-Kendall trend analysis, an increase in the yield of many crops (e.g., winter paddy, banana) is evident, which emphasises the critical role of irrigation in driving the crop productivity. As an adaptation strategy to changing rainfall patterns, irrigation would meet the additional crop water requirement for sustainable agricultural production under the varying rainfall distributions. However, the increase in the area under irrigation in recent years has had significant implications for both surface water and groundwater resources. The conclusive findings suggest that the region requires climate-resilient agriculture, focusing on optimising irrigation and developing sustainable agriculture and water conservation strategies.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Agriculture Department and the Department of Economics and Statistics, Government of Kerala for providing data which helps to interpret the results.
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The Department of Science and Technology (DST) provided financial assistance under the DST-INSPIRE Fellowship, DST/INSPIRE/03/2018/003008 for the successful completion of research work.
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Lakshmi Rajan: original draft; data collection; formal analysis; writing. Jobin Thomas: resources, software, visualization, review and editing. Sabu Joseph: supervision; project administration; data curation, review and editing.
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R., L., Thomas, J. & Joseph, S. Impacts of recent rainfall changes on agricultural productivity and water resources within the Southern Western Ghats of Kerala, India. Environ Monit Assess 196, 115 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-12270-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-12270-x