EVALUATION OF A CANAL IRRIGATION SYSTEM PERFORMANCE USING REMOTE SENSING AND GIS

Abstract

Various institutions and researchers have been working on the approaches to assess the performance of irrigation system to find the actual condition of irrigation system and to develop ideas to improve them. Earlier in 1990s, International Irrigation Management Institute (IIMI renamed as IWMI), developed a methodology to assess the performance of irrigation system at a small scale (50-150ha). Later, IWMI worked on many small to large irrigation systems and developed various methodologies to assess the performance. In India, the Indian National Committee on Irrigation Drainage (INCID) developed a set of indicators to determine the performance of irrigation system. These indicators work at a scale on which an irrigation system is ranked to evaluate the performance. Assessment of performance of irrigation system includes various aspects such as physical condition of system, water delivery and use, management, farm product, socio-economic condition of beneficiaries etc. Hence with the availability of time and data, performance assessment work should be confined to the limit aspects. Increasing population of world increases the demand food and fibre, which necessitates optimization of the performance of irrigation system to increase food and fibre yields from the available resources. The high yielding varieties of crop require timely and adequate supply of water. To ensure the timely and adequately supply of water, a well performing, and well managed irrigation system is required. With the development of technology, it becomes possible to assess performance of an irrigation system in multidimensional ways. Availability of satellite data in conjunction with other ground data helps to assess the performance minutely in spatial and temporal approach. The use of software in the sector of agriculture can have revolutionary influence in finding appropriate cropping pattern, and cropping intensity, and assessing crop water demand, and yield. For the evaluation of performance canal irrigation system, use of indicators provide the actual condition of system in terms of water dynamics, water use and productivity. In this study, depleted fraction of Gadarjudda and Lakhnauta minor are nearly 1 for paddy giving productivity (actual water consumed) up to 1.30 kg/m3 followed by wheat of productivity up to 1.61 kg/m3 and sugarcane of productivity up to 6.08 kg/m3 during study period shows the good performance of systems