A SPATIAL DATABASE OF CROPPING SYSTEM AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS TO AID CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT ASSESSMENT STUDIES

摘要

Cropping system level study is not only useful to understand to overall sustainability of agricultural system, but also it helps in generating many important parameters which are useful in climate change impact assessment. Considering its importance, Space Applications Centre, took up a project for mapping and characterizing major cropping systems of Indo-Gangetic Plains of India. The study area included the five states of Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) of India, i.e. Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. There were two aspects of the study. The first aspect included state and district level cropping system mapping using multi-date remote sensing (IRS-AWiFS and Radarsat ScanSAR) data. The second part was to characterize the cropping using moderate resolution multi-date sensing data (SPOT VGT NDVI) and ground survey. While the remote sensing data was used to compute three performance indices (namely, Multiple Cropping Index, Area Diversity Index and Cultivated Land Utilization Index), the ground survey was conducted using questionnaires filled up by 1000 farmers selected from 103 villages based on the cropping systems map. Apart from ground survey, soil and water sampling and quality analysis was carried out to understand the effect of different cropping system and their management practices. The results showed that, rice-wheat was the major cropping system of the Indo-Gangetic Plains, followed by Rice-Fallow-Fallow and Maize-Wheat. Other major cropping systems of IGP included Sugarcane based, Pearl millet-Wheat, Rice-Fallow-Rice, Cotton-Wheat. The ground survey could identify 77 cropping systems, out of which 38 are rice-based systems. Out of these 77 cropping systems, there were 5 single crop systems, occupying 6.5 percent coverage (of all cropping system area), 56 double crop systems with 72.7 percent coverage, and 16 triple crop systems with 20.8 percent coverage The cropping system performance analysis showed that the crop diversity was found to be highest in Haryana, while the cropping intensity was highest in Punjab state.