Applications of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System to Identify Rice Planting Season During El Nino Years: Case Study in the Pringsewu District, Province of Lampung

Abstract

Spatial Information about rice planting season (RPS) in a wide areas, particularly during periods of El Nino, is important to support an information about the availability of rice continously. Application of remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) technology can support it's information continuously and accurate. In this study, we attempted to identify the rice planting season during El Nino years of 1997, 2006 and 2015 in the Pringsewu district, Lampung and we compared with meteorological drought index. Spatial information of the RPS obtained through Interpretation of multitemporal Landsat data aquired in 1997, 2006 and 2015 using normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the humidity index. While standardized precipitation index (SPI) is used as a indicator of meteorological drought. This study has shown that the application of remote sensing and GIS could accurately monitor the rice planting season during the periods of El Nino in 1997, 2006 and 2015. The fallow land dominated during the El Nino years and there were no significant difference between years. While drought information based on SPI values showed different results between years of El Nino events. In this paper we also discussed the relationship between distribution of fallow land and meteorological drought in a spatial perspective.