Water Management Using Remote Sensing Techniques

Abstract

Water is the most conservative and natural resource for agriculture. But unfortunately in our country the well known fact is that the gap between the demand and supply of water for agriculture is becoming larger. Due to rapid increase in population growth, much of the water resources are being diverted from agricultural to non agricultural purposes. Instead of going into augmentation, water management policies emphasize each and every farmer to take an initiative in limiting water consumption by implementing need based irrigation. To do so, a systematic monitoring of water content at the surface of soil and its root zone is essential at each stage of the growth of a crop. In this process several methodologies like Gravimetric, TDR, TDT, FDR, ADR, Phase Transmission and Nuclear have evolved in determining soil moisture content and are successful to some extent. These methods are chosen based on factors like soil type, field maintenance, measurement time, operating temperature, measurement range, accuracy, power consumption, cost and ease of use. Information on soil moisture can be obtained by using above techniques but are time consuming and will have limited spatial coverage. In that case Remote Sensing Techniques provide better spatial and temporal coverage of soil moisture readings. The role of electronics and computers in Agriculture in designing sensors is very significant. This paper is limited to remote sensing techniques in this respect.