Utility of Satellite-Based Open Access Data in Estimating Land and Water Productivity for a Canal Command

Abstract

Increasing competition for land and water resources is expected in future due to rising demands for food and bioenergy production, biodiversity conservation, and changing production conditions due to climate change. Growing competition for water in many sectors reduces its availability for irrigation. Thus, efficient approaches are required for effective management of water in every sector, particularly in agriculture. To achieve efficient and effective water use, it requires increasing crop water productivity (WP) and crop yield through improved crop varieties. Only high water productivity values carry little importance if they are not associated with increased or acceptable yields. Such association of high (or moderate) water productivity values with high (or moderate) yields has considerable implications on water’s effective use. Land productivity and water productivity increment are the most efficient solution for meeting increasing food demand and climate variation. Water consumption (evapotranspiration (ET)) is an influencing factor for productivity estimation across a command area. Thus, in the present analysis, ET was estimated first, followed by land and water productivity assessment for the Hirakud canal command situated in the Mahanadi basin. Water accounting plus (WA+) Framework, jointly developed by the UNESCO-IHE, IWMI and FAO, has been utilized to assess the total water consumptions, agricultural water consumptions (using green water and blue water), and estimation of land and water productivity for a period of 12 years, i.e., 2003–2014. WA+ is a python based framework designed to provide explicit spatial information on water depletion and the net withdrawal process of a region using globally available open access data. The results showed that land productivity and water productivity varies from 1973 to 2219 (kg/ha) and 0.41 to 0.55 (kg/m³) for irrigated cereals (paddy), respectively, across the Hirakud canal command area.