Quantitative determination of rice cultivated areas using geospatial techniques.

Abstract

Spatial variability of crop coverage and delineation of cropped area not only assist in yield estimation but also provides information of crop water demand at regional scales. Such activity when accomplished using remote sensing image analysis techniques becomes less cumbersome and time consuming as compared to field survey. Present study was undertaken to delineate the rice cropped area in Haryana using the remote sensing image of 2000. Haryana is located under agro-climatic region VI with more than 70% of the population rely on agriculture for their livelihood. Arc GIS tool was used to classify the area under rice crop using Iso cluster unsupervised classification technique. It was accomplished by using the crop cover map besides the published reports to corroborate the findings. The total cultivated land was found to be 3526 thousand hectares in the year 2000 by the Planning Commission report, 2009. The total area under rice crop was found to be 1049 thousand hectares in the year 2000 by Agricultural Statistics at a Glance, 2001, Department of Agriculture, Haryana. However, the delineated area for the year 2000 using remote sensing was 1051 thousand hectares. However, such analysis with ground truthing information would be less cumbersome and accomplished with minimal cost and time. The protocol developed in this study pertaining to analysis of remote sensing image to delineate the cropped area can be replicated to other regions.