Assessment of Crop Changes in Southern Uzbekistan for Better Crop Allocation and Water Resource Management

Abstract

Economy of Central Asian countries heavily rely on irrigated agriculture. The region is facing challenges with regard to water shortages to meet currently cultivated crop water requirement. Talking about water generally gives a view of food security, climate change and energy efficiency. Scarcity of water leads to better understand the role of water to the environment and its effect to the nature. As water is indispensable part of agriculture, there is always need for positive developments of sustainable water management system in agricultural fields. Improper crop allocation can influence for degradation of land, groundwater level change, as well as food security. Therefore, this study aims to learn crop pattern changes over time which can serve as a basis for better water management in the region. In addition to this, this study covered what is the major changes in irrigated agriculture in terms of crop allocation to understand the crop rotations over time. Freely available satellite data was used for mapping crop classification and their changes for this region. Widely used Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) technique was applied to extract information from Landsat raw data. The study was carried out in Karshi Steppe in southern part of Uzbekistan and this region is one of the area that is experiencing challenges on water availability where water resources are mainly pumped from Amudarya River which is located in the lower altitude of the region. Therefore understanding currently cultivated crop types will help to further explore actual crop water requirements which may provide an information on how much water is actually needed and can be lifted with minimum financial costs. They are then can be used in further application to find out Evapotranspiration (ET) of individual crops and help decision makers making better decisions.