Remote Sensing for Agricultural Water Management

Monitoring and assessing land and water use in agriculture is key to understand the resource usage and plan interventions for ensuring sustainable use. Field based methods are challenging due to several factors such as cost, practicality in terms of coverage, maintenance for long term support etc, remote sensing offers a reliable alternative in monitoring the key variables continuously and at an unprecedented scale.

In this short course, application of remote sensing techniques to assess the performance of irrigation by estimating water use (Evapotranspiration) and land use (crop yield/biomass) are covered. The course is designed based on a case study where participants will learn from data acquisition to retrieving key information on land and water use through lectures and connected hands-on exercises.

Topics to be covered:

Overview of remote sensing applications in agricultural water management

Surface Energy Balance Model to compute evapotranspiration using satellite data

Remote sensing based crop yield and Water productivity assessment

Remote Sensing for irrigation performance assessment

Formative assessments are designed through quizzes and reading/reflection exercise. Individual report on results, analysis and reflection has to be submitted as final summative assessment. Open source libraries and open access data will be used for the entire course.