Abstract
Abstract. The agricultural water use efficiency (AWUE) over India was evaluated during 2009–2014 through three steps e.g. productivity mapping using MODIS GPP; consumptive water use (CWU) mapping in terms of evapotranspiration (ET) partioned into green (CWUg; ET streaming from rainfall) and blue (CWUb; ET streaming from irrigation) water; AWUE mapping i.e. the ratio of the seasonal sum of GPP and CWU in terms of green (AWUFg) and blue (AWUFb) water. The CWU was estimated from seasonal sum of crop ET (ETc). ETc was obtained from composite crop co-efficient from INSAT and corresponding reference ET (ET0), where daily ET0 was estimated using daily solar insolation (Kalpana-1VHRR) and metrological data from Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) variables through data fusion in FAO-56 framework. Monthly effective rainfall (ER) was estimated from daily NOAA CPC rainfall data using USDA SCS method. Actual ET (ETa) was estimated using single-source surface energy balance framework with thermal observations from MODIS and MERRA reanalysis data. The CWUg at seasonal scale was determined using ER, ETa and CWU, whereas CWUb was estimated as the difference between ETa and CWUg followed by estimation of AWUEg and AWUEb. The average AWUEg and AWUEb during kharif and rabi seasons were found to be 1.13 kg Cm−3 and 1.25 kg Cm−3 respectively with highest share goes to Indo-gangetic plains due to high crop intensification. The arid and semiarid tract showed low AWUE. The baseline assessment of satellite based AWUE at country scale providesa scope for better management of agricultural water with respect to food security.
Highlights
Agriculture is the largest user of water and the most sensitive industry because climate change impact influences on rainfall pattern and drought (Yooet al. 2015)
The present study provides the baseline quantification of agricultural water use efficiency in cropland in spatially explicit way by taking into account both green and blue water components
The results showed that the average consumptive water use (CWU) (20092014) of Indian agriculture were found to be 5630 mm and 4585 mm during kharif and rabi seasons, respectively in the crop growing periods
Summary
Agriculture is the largest user of water and the most sensitive industry because climate change impact influences on rainfall pattern and drought (Yooet al. 2015). Chapagain and Hoekstra (2004) improved this study in a number of respects, but still did not explicitly distinguish between green and blue water consumption.Global estimate of agricultural green and blue water consumption were made for agricultural crops (Rost et al 2008,Siebert and Doll, 2010;Liu et al 2009; Liu and Yang, 2010).But the studies did not explain the scope of satellite observations for assessments of consumptive uses of green and blue water and its utilization efficiency at regional scale Against this background, the present study was
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