EVALUATE THE CROPPING PATTERN IN THE COMMAND AREAS USING SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING TECHNIQUES OF GODAVARI BASIN MAJOR IRRIGATION PROJECTS

* Dr. Narsimha Kota, Girija Pamu, Ravi Sanatana and M.Suresh. Rural Development Society, R&D Centre, Prestige Rai Towers, Flat No.404, B-Block, Punjagutta, Hyderabad, Telangana, and India. ...................................................................................................................... Manuscript Info Abstract ......................... ........................................................................ Manuscript History

India is one among the largest irrigators of the world but, there is an increasing concern over low crop productivity, low water use efficiency and the gap between Irrigation potential created and Irrigation potential utilized. The Kadem, Nizamsagar and Sriram sagar projects located at Adilabad, Nizamabad ,Karimnagar and Warangal districts, in South Telangana, This is constructed the Godavari River basin. Remote Sensing & GIS tools were effectively employed to assess irrigated crop acreage information right up to Distributary/ Off Take(OT) level. Topography analysis is used for separation of cultivable command area (CCA) and uncommand areas. Landsat -8 and IRS P6 -LISS III, satellite data before construction of the Reservoir (2009-10, 2010-11) and after Construction of the Reservoir (2014-15 & 2015-16) is processed for classification of Wet & Dry crops irrigated under canal and that irrigated by other sources such as Tanks and Groundwater. The prime objective is to evaluate the cropping pattern in the command areas using satellite remote sensing techniques supplemented with field data during Rabi season of 2015 -16. It is observed that, due to the influence of urban development in some distributaries and conversion of wet crops and fallow land to ID crops there is decrease of wet crops and increase of ID crops. It is observed that GIS and RS techniques of evaluating the project performance are useful for decision making regarding the water management issues.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….... Introduction:-
Monitoring and evaluation of irrigation command with regard to water management and agricultural productivity is vital to know the resource, environment and the returns from the investment. It is realized that a substantial gap exists between irrigation potential created and potential utilized. Irrigation planning and management involves knowledge of both the total demand and the distribution of demand for irrigation water over space and time. The major information required for irrigation studies is about crop type, crop acreage, crop condition and crop yield. From this information estimates for water demands can be made. Because of the time constraints, dynamic changes and vast areas involved, Remote Sensing is found to be an effective tool for irrigation studies compared to conventional methods which are point based, time consuming and cumbersome.

ISSN: 2320-5407
Int. J. Adv. Res. 5(7), 1719-1725 1720 Remote sensing techniques are cost and time effective to provide objective primary information of cropping pattern, cropping intensity, crop acreage, crop productivity, water logging and soil salinity/alkalinity, irrigation area utilization on the spatial and temporal scales. This helps in comparative performances, evaluation and identifying problem areas within the command for corrective management measures.

Objective:-
The prime objective is to evaluate the cropping pattern in the command areas using satellite remote sensing techniques supplemented with field data during Rabi season of 2015 -16.
Assessment of irrigated cropped area using high resolution satellite data.

Study Area:-
The study covers all the existing 3 Major irrigation projects under Godavari basin of Telangana State. The part of Godavari basin has 3 Major and 20 Medium irrigation projects and the part of Krishna basin has 4 Major and 13 Medium irrigation projects. The Figure-1 shows the spatial extent of the command areas. Table 1 shows the details of Major Projects, such as Ayacut, Mandals & Villages covered.  Landsat -8, OLI_TIRS data of 14th, 16th February and 23th February is classified to identify for each command the spatial extent of Wet and irrigated dry (ID) crops. Multi date interpretation is performed on available satellite data, so as to avoid cloud cover and analyse the best reflectance available in either of the images. The Interpretation is validated using the Ground Truth data. The performance indicators viz. Equivalent Wet area for all the projects has been estimated.

Analysis & Observations:-
The total command ayacut of Major and Medium Irrigation projects of Telangana State is 10.83 lakh ha. The command ayacut of Major and Medium Irrigation projects is 9.43 % of the total geographical area of Telangana State. Major three projects total ayacut area in Godavari basins of Telangana State is 5,08,455 ha covered by 105 mandals / 1532 villages either totally or partially.

Godavari basin -Major Projects:-
The Godavari basin of Telangana has 3 Major irrigation projects with command ayacut of 5.08 lakh ha covered by 105 mandals / 1532 villages. In Telangana State out of the total irrigated area by major irrigation projects 54% of the irrigated area is contributed by Godavari Basin.

Results:-
 The irrigated area is found to be 6,113 ha out of the total ayacut of 27,530 ha.  The equivalent Wet area is estimated as 2,943 ha and ID area is estimated as 3,170 ha.  The total crop area is 22% of the total ayacut area out of which the wet crop is 48% and ID crop is 52% of the total irrigated area.

Conclusions:-
 Kadam Narayan Reddy Project -Comparative analysis of total Rabi crop area, Wet crop and ID crop over last year shows that the total Rabi crop has reduced, thee reduction is in Wet crop area. The total crop area is 22% of the total ayacut area and the wet crop is 48% and ID crop is 52% of the total irrigated area.  Nizamsagar Project -Comparative analysis of total Rabi crop area, Wet crop and ID crop over last year shows that the total Rabi crop has reduced mainly because of major reduction in Wet crop area, increase in ID crop area. The total crop area is 75%% of the total ayacut area and the wet crop is 41% and ID crop is 59 % of the total irrigated area.  Sriramsagar Project (SRRSP-I) -Comparative analysis of total Rabi crop area, Wet crop and ID crop over last year shows that the total Rabi crop has reduced mainly because of major reduction in both Wet and ID crop area. The total crop area is 42% of the total ayacut area and the wet crop is 40% and ID crop is 60 % of the total irrigated area.  From the entire study the following conclusions were arrived for the year 2014--15.  The Rabi crop area is less than the ayacut area for all the major and medium irrigation projects  The Rabi crop area, in all the major irrigation projects, for the current year, 2015-16 is 61.5% when compared with the previous year 2014-15.  The performance of command area of major irrigation projects put in was moderate.  The major irrigation projects performed well when compared to medium irrigation projects.  In most of the irrigation projects reduction in ID crop area was more when compared with reduction in Wet crop area.