A GIS-based spatially distributed crop water demand modelling for Pullambadi canal command area in lower Cauvery basin, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

The assessment of irrigation demand is an important component for an effective water management in the canal command area. The rapid increase in the water scarcity on recent years have been a boon to the farmers who require water for irrigation purposes. Effective water management technique is the utmost required system to schedule the water for irrigation purposes so as to overcome the issues due to water scarcity. But there exist serious issues related to the water management system; they include the availability of real time information on the agricultural land in the command area of the canal, its area, the crop variety and the water demand for each crop. These data cannot be availed that easily as many irrigation schemes are vast and cover about hundreds and sometimes thousands of square miles and have vast numbers of farms; their scale severely limits the effectiveness of the data collection. The present study focused on assessment of the irrigation and agriculture potential for Pullambadi Irrigation project using Geospatial Techniques. The daily weather parameters, the land use/land cover of the region were collected as they serve to be the primary requirements. The study incorporated the data availed from satellite imageries and other possible sources and the water requirement for the years 2015 and 2016 were computed. As per the obtained results, the canal command area required 1069.96 and 965.1 Mm3 for the years 2015 and 2016, respectively.