Satellite & Space Missions

Biography

Biography: Salwa Belaqziz

Abstract

With the increasing pressure on water resources accentuated by climate change, irrigation scheduling has become an important tool that significantly influences growth, development and production of crops and which allow avoiding both excessive irrigation and crop water stress. For this purpose, using remote sensing-based vegetation indices derived from optical data, can be considered as a suitable tool for monitoring crop phenology, water stress and therefore, the crop water requirement. In this context, we present and evaluate a new irrigation priority index (the IPI) based on remote sensing, which measures the irrigation priority of a plot in parts concerned by the irrigation round. This normalized indicator takes into account the water stress coefficient and the time of irrigation with regard to the duration of an irrigation round. The IPI ranges between -1 and 1 and decreases with irrigation priority. The IPI was used to evaluate the actual irrigation scheduling in an irrigated perimeter of 2800 ha of Tensift Al Haouz plain close to Marrakech in Morocco during the 2002–2003 winter wheat season. The obtained results showed that about 32% of the plots receive late irrigation, when the stress was maximum. The sensitivity of grain yield to the IPI values was also evaluated on a data set of wheat yields acquired on the 2008–2009 season. The spatial yield was simply calculated using a linear relationship between wheat yields and the spatial accumulated NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index). The result showed a clear relationship between grain yield and IPI.