Mapping Drought-induced Changes in Rice Area in India

Figure 10. Identification of drought stress-prone areas and number of years in which stress occurred between 2000 to 2009

Murali Krishna Gumma (ICRISAT), Andy Nelson (University of Twente/ITC), and Takashi Yamano (IRRI) co-authored a paper published in the International Journal of Remote Sensing on the mapping of different types of droughts in India and their consequential effects on the rice harvested area reduction using MODIS-derived vegetation indices. When compared with the known observations of historic drought and rainfall data, the remote sensing-based estimates showed high-correlation with the extent and severity of droughts and the reduction of rice areas.

Abstract
Rice is a staple food crop of India and is grown on 44 Mha (2011–12), 58.6% of which are irrigated. An inevitable phenomenon which looms over all aspects of human life and affects rice production in India is drought. Assessing drought damage using geospatial datasets available in the public domain, such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), can provide specific and local ecoregion information for developing drought-resistant rice varieties. Based on multi-temporal NDVI data and field observations in 2009, we developed a methodology to identify and map drought-affected areas in India. A long-term (10-year) average of NDVI during the rainy (kharif) season (June–October) was compared with NDVI from a known drought year (2002–03) to identify changes in rice area. Rainfall data from the Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission (TRMM) was used to support the drought analysis. Spectral matching techniques were used to categorize the drought-affected rice areas into three classes – severe, moderate, and mild based on the intensity of damage assessed through field sampling. Based on these ground survey samples, spectral signatures were generated. It was found that the rice area was about 16% less in the drought year (2002–03) than in a normal year (2000–01). A comparison of the MODIS-derived rice area affected by drought in 2002 for each state and district against the difference in the kharif season harvested rice area between 2000 and 2002 (from official statistics) revealed a substantial difference in harvested area in 2002 that was largely attributable to drought. An 84.7% correlation was found between the MODIS-derived drought-affected area in 2002 and the reduction in harvested area from 2000–01 to 2002–03. Good spatial correlation was found between the drought-affected rice areas and reduction of rice harvested areas in different rice ecologies, indicating the usefulness of such geospatial datasets in assessing abiotic stress such as drought and its consequences.

Gumma, Murali Krishna, Andrew Nelson, and Takashi Yamano. “Mapping drought-induced changes in rice area in India.” International Journal of Remote Sensing (2018): 1-28.

DOI: 10.1080/01431161.2018.1547456

December 4, 2018

CGIAR-CSI

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