Summary
Land and water productivity in middle and tail reaches of canal commands in
north-west India has remained low due to poor canal water demand-supply management and
inefficient on-farm water management practices. This could further degrade due to deterioration
in canal condition, ongoing secondary soil salinization and waterlogging, limited
farmers' investment potential and diversion to other water users' sectors. In order
to enhance productivity, a holistic approach needs to be applied to understand spatial
variability of resources and socio-economic conditions in a canal command to develop
best management practices (BMPs) for canal reach specific problems. Satellite remote
sensing, GPS survey, PRA and GIS are employed to assess and monitor productivity
at distributary/watercourse levels. Therefore, the project is aimed to develop an
irri-agro informatics database and a GIS based decision support system (DSS) for
the Western Yamuna Canal (WYC) command in Haryana by integrating bio-physical resources
and socio-economic data to delineate areas of low productivity and to generate realistic
best management practices (BMPs) for enhancing productivity in various scenarios
of canal water distribution at mid and tail reaches including deficit canal water
supply, poor soil and water quality, and waterlogging conditions. The developed
SDSS would effectively be transferred to stakeholders in order to choose BMP plans
for growing more food with less water in saline environment.
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- Strength of the Project
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- Consortium mode for project development and implementation by utilizing expertise
of three participating institutions (CSSRI, WTC and NIH).
- Bottom-up approach to problem solving and modelling.
- State-of-the-art technology employed including satellite remote sensing, GIS, GPS,
PRA and physically based modelling.
- Stakeholders' servicing to infuse confidence on the developed DSS technology through
demonstrations, workshops and trainings.
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