Increasing the Resilience of Indian Agriculture to Intra-seasonal Monsoon Variability Through Optimized Irrigation Strategies
Abstract
Primarily dependent on monsoon rains for water, agriculture across India is extremely vulnerable to both dry spells and short-duration rains, which are becoming increasingly frequent due to climate change. While predicting India's crop yields as a function of precipitation has been a topic of extensive research, most previous studies with statistical models have used seasonal average rainfall values, largely ignoring intra-seasonal variability. Rainfed agriculture occupies 67% of the net sown area in India, making more than 500 million people engaged in this activity extremely vulnerable to such daily variations in weather. To assess the impact of intra-seasonal precipitation variability on crops, we developed a daily soil moisture model using historical weather data in conjunction with a multi-crop evapotranspiration model that we created at district level. From the output of our soil moisture model, we defined a daily crop water availability index, and used it to build an improved climate-crop statistical model that can further improve our ability to predict crop yields.
We are currently using this model to forecast the possible mitigation of crop yield losses resulting from monsoon variability, if supplemental irrigation is introduced in currently rainfed regions in India. As irrigation is a highly resource-intensive activity, both in terms of water use and energy, our analysis will be grounded in the practical constraints to irrigation expansion such as water scarcity and energy access in each major agricultural region of India. Our data-driven approach to this complex optimization problem at the food-energy-water nexus will help inform policy for developing sustainable irrigation facilities in India's currently rainfed regions, with the aim of making crop yields more resilient to monsoon variability and climate change.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC21C1270S
- Keywords:
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- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1694 Instruments and techniques;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1803 Anthropogenic effects;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 4313 Extreme events;
- NATURAL HAZARDS