Characterizing Indian agriculture based on climate resilience/vulnerability using time-series climate and vegetation data
Student name: Ms Rituparna Das
Guide: Dr Anu Rani Sharma
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: Regional Remote Sensing Centre (East)
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Shri. Prabir Kumar Das
Abstract: Long term (1982-2015) gridded precipitation data along with time-series NDVI were used to study the relationship between the meteorological and agricultural drought over Indian agricultural area. Several meteorological drought parameters, e.g. duration, magnitude and extend, were computed for Indian summer monsoon season (June-Sept) based on the standardized precipitation index (SPI) at different time scale at district level. A new approach, i.e. Weighted Drought Index (WDI), was proposed in the study to quantify the meteorological drought by considering all major drought parameters. Subsequently, the long term NDVI data was used to detect the major crop phenological stages during the kharif season over the Indian agricultural area. A unique approach, i.e. Agricultural Drought Index (ADI), was proposed towards quantification of the agricultural drought by combining several standardized phenological parameters, like length of growing period, seasonal NDVI etc. A Mann-Kendall test which is non-parametric and Sen's slope method were carried out to analyze the trend in the meteorological and agricultural drought parameters along with two new indices. Finally, the correlation study was carried out to identify the relationship between WDI and ADI, and to classify Indian agricultural area based on its climate vulnerability/resilience. As a result it can be seen that throughout the north to northeast region and western peninsular region maximum agricultural drought was found. In the northeast region increasing trend was found for meteorological drought whereas in the southern peninsular decreasing trend were found. In some districts along the Indo-Gangetic plain and some districts of Madhya Pradesh, western Gujarat were more climate vulnerable whereas in the northwest districts were more resilient. Some isolated districts in southern peninsular region were found to be vulnerable.
