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Estimation of the Green and Blue Water Footprint of Kharif Rice Using Remote
Sensing Techniques: a Case Study of Ranchi

Conference Paper · December 2020

DOI: 10.1109/InGARSS48198.2020.9358924

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Swadhina Koley Jeganathan Chockalingam

Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra
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 ESTIMATION OF THE GREEN AND BLUE WATER FOOTPRINT OF KHARIF RICE
USING REMOTE SENSING TECHNIQUES: A CASE STUDY OF RANCHI
Swadhina Koley, Jeganathan C.
Department of Remote Sensing, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi
ABSTRACT
The water footprint of a crop is defined as the total
volume of water consumed for the production of the
crop in the growing season. The total water footprint
comprises of the three components, i.e. the rainwater
(green water footprint), irrigated water (blue water
footprint) and the polluted water (grey water
footprint) usage for the production. This study
discusses the potential of the remote sensing
techniques for the assessment of the green and blue
water footprint of rice crop with the help of high
temporal resolution and real-time data, in the tropical
region of Ranchi, Jharkhand. In this paper, the
evapotranspiration (ET) and rainfall (RF) have been
identified as the key parameters for the assessment of
the water usage. The study uses MODIS
Evapotranspiration data and CHIRPS rainfall data,
along with CLIMWAT station data to estimate the
green and blue component of the water usage.
Index terms: Remote sensing, water footprint, high
resolution
1. INTRODUCTION
Agriculture sector is the largest consumer of the
global freshwater resource (about 80% of the total
resource). As the worldwide population grows day by
day, the water resources have been exploited to a
huge extent to improve the agricultural production to
meet the food demand of the growing population.
Also, the future need to increase the crop production
will affect the water use by agriculture, which will
further leave an impact on the global water resources.
Hence, quantifying the usage of water for crop
production from different sources, be it the rainwater
or the irrigation water, has become necessary for
proper water resource management as well as
sustainable farming practices like irrigation planning.
978-1-7281-3114-6/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE
The concept of water footprint (WF) was suggested
by Chapagain and Hoekstra in 2004 [1], to quantify
the total water usage for the production of different
crops. The WF is characterized by three components;
green WF is a measure of the rainwater used, blue
WF quantifies the irrigated water use for different
crops, while the grey WF is the indicator of the
amount of water pollution due to application of
fertilizers. A sum of these three components
contribute to the total WF of the crop. The WF
depends upon the major parameters like
evapotranspiration, rainfall, crop water demand and
the need of suitable pollutant as fertilizers for crop
growth.
Rice is the staple food for majority of the population
worldwide as well as the tropical region like
Jharkhand in India. The state grows rice as the major
crop (kharif rice) mostly in the monsoon season,
utilizing the good amount of rainfall. Previously,
researches have been performed to estimate the WF
of rice using conventional methods and field data
[2]–[4]. [5] performed a grid-based study for the
estimation of water footprint of different crops and
derived crop products. However, usage of remote
sensing techniques in this regard is limited. Though
procuring remote sensing data with both high spatial
and temporal resolution is a constraint for this kind
of study, it still helps with providing the real-time
data with higher temporal resolution needed for the
WF assessment. This study aims to evaluate the
green and blue water consumed by the kharif rice in
the cropping year 2015-16 using remote sensing data
and techniques.
2. STUDY AREA
The Ranchi district in Jharkhand falls under the
Central and North Eastern Plateau zone of the three
1 InGARSS 2020
agro-climatic zones in the state. The total area of the
district is about 5005.42 sq. km. and the expansion of
the district is from 22.88oN-23.72oN and 84.86oE-
85.90oE. The average elevation of the district is about
529m above the sea level. The average annual rainfall
in the area is about 1400mm, about 90% of which
occurs during June to September. The FAO
CLIMWAT station at Ranchi is located at 23.43oN,
85.4oE (Fig. 1). Rice is one of the major crops grown
in this region.
Fig. 1: Location of the study area with the LULC map
and the CLIMWAT station at Ranchi
3. DATA AND METHODS
For the estimation of water footprint, two important
parameters are crop evapotranspiration (ETC) and
effective rainfall (PEff). MODIS 8 daily (MOD16A2,
V006) potential evapotranspiration (ET0) data at
500m spatial resolution and CHIRPS daily rainfall
(RF) data at 5km spatial resolution were used for this
study. However, the CHIRPS dataset was
downscaled to 500m resolution with the help of
CLIMWAT station data. The CLIMWAT database of
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the
United Nations, was used additionally for the ET0,
RF and PEff data. The crop coefficients (KC) for rice
at different growth stages, were obtained from the
FAO CROPWAT database. The crop yield data (Y)
was obtained from the Area Production and Yield
(APY) information system of Ministry of Agriculture
and Farmers Welfare. ESA CCI land cover map of
2015 was used for masking out the non-crop lands of
the study region. This research was done for the
2015-16 crop year (June 2015 to May 2016). The
length of growing period for the kharif rice in this
crop year was identified from June to September,
2015. Fig. 2 describes the variation of the total
monthly evapotranspiration and the total monthly
rainfall based on the satellite data obtained over the
study period and the historical data obtained from the
CLIMWAT database.
Fig. 2: Monthly rainfall and evapotranspiration based
on the historical data obtained from CLIMWAT
database and study period (2015-16)
The two major parameters for evaluating the water
footprint of a crop are crop evapotranspiration (ETC)
and effective rainfall (PEff). The ETC is calculated by
the following formula [6]:
𝐸𝑇𝐶 = 𝐾𝐶 ∗ 𝐸𝑇0 (1)
Where, KC is the crop coefficient of the particular
crop at different growth stages and can be obtained
from the FAO crop database. For rice, the KC was
chosen as 1.10 and 1.20, directly obtained from the
FAO crop database, for the initial and development
stages of the growth period respectively based on the
phenology. ET0 (mm) is the potential
evapotranspiration.
2
The effective rainfall was estimated according to the September). Also, the CLIMWAT station data were
Soil Conservation Service (SCS) method developed interpolated at 500m spatial resolution to estimate the
by US Department of Agriculture (USDA), using the WFGreen and WFBlue based on the historical database.
following formulae [7]: Fig. 3 describes the schematic diagram of the
𝑃𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ ∗(125−0.2∗𝑃𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ )
followed methodology.
𝑃𝐸𝑓𝑓 =
125
; Pmonth<=250mm
(2)

𝑃𝐸𝑓𝑓 = 125 + 0.1 ∗ 𝑃𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ ; Pmonth>250mm

(3)

The green and blue component of water footprint

refers to the rainfall and irrigated water usage of the
crop and is derived by [8]:
𝐶𝑊𝑈𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛
𝑊𝐹𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛 = 𝑌
(4)

𝐶𝑊𝑈𝐵𝑙𝑢𝑒
𝑊𝐹𝐵𝑙𝑢𝑒 = (5) Fig. 3: Schematic diagram of the methodology
𝑌

Where WFGreen (m3/ton) is the green water footprint,
WFBlue is the blue water footprint, CWUGreen (m3/ha)
is the green component of crop water use, CWUBlue
(m3/ha) is the blue component of crop water use and
Y (ton/ha) is the crop yield.
The CWU can be calculated by taking into account
the sum of the daily ET over the length of growing
period (lgp).
𝑙𝑔𝑝
𝐶𝑊𝑈𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛 = 10 ∗ ∑𝑑=1 𝐸𝑇𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛 (6)
𝑙𝑔𝑝
𝐶𝑊𝑈𝐵𝑙𝑢𝑒 = 10 ∗ ∑𝑑=1 𝐸𝑇𝐵𝑙𝑢𝑒 (7)
Where ETGreen is considered as the value of ETC or
PEff, whichever has the minimum value and ETBlue is
considered as the maximum value amongst 0 and the
difference between ETC and PEff.
𝐸𝑇𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛 = min⁡(𝐸𝑇𝐶 , 𝑃𝐸𝑓𝑓 ) (8)
𝐸𝑇𝐵𝑙𝑢𝑒 = max⁡(0, 𝐸𝑇𝐶 − 𝑃𝐸𝑓𝑓 ) (9)
The factor 10 in eq. 6 and 7 converts the water depths
in millimeters into water volumes per unit area of
land in m3/ha [8]. MODIS PET data and downscaled
CHIRPS data, both at 500m spatial resolution were
used directly to evaluate the WFGreen and WFBlue over
the growing period of kharif rice (June to
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
For the month of June and September, the total
rainfall of the individual month was less than 250 mm
and in July and August, the total rainfall of the
individual month was greater than 250mm. Hence,
effective rainfall for the month of June and
September was calculated according to eqn. 2 and the
same for the month of July and August was
calculated according to eqn. 3. The total effective
rainfall for the entire period (June to September) was
estimated to range from 1035.39 mm to 1317.55 mm
over the region. The total PET of the region ranged
from 538.5 mm to 883.2 mm from June to September.
The satellite data derived WFGreen ranged from
7258.06 m3/ton to 8678.19 m3/ton. WFBlue ranged
from 2188.28 m3/ton to 6031.8 m3/ton. About
66.13% of area uses between 7500-8000 m3/ton
rainwater for rice production, while only about
0.94% area uses rainwater greater than 8000 m3/ton.
About 98.07% area uses 3000-5000 m3/ton irrigated
water and only about 1.05% area uses irrigated water
greater than 5000 m3/ton. As the crop is mainly
rainfed, the ratio of green water footprint to blue
water footprint is more than 1 allover the region.

3
 However, this range differed from that derived using
the interpolated raster based on the historical station
data. The WFGreen at the CLIMWAT Ranchi station,
based on the historical data, was 7048.23 m3/ton and
the WFBlue was found to be 167.12 m3/ton. As the
estimation of WF depends on the local
meteorological parameters, the variation of these
parameters over time causes the difference of the
estimated WF values between the historical period
and the concerned study period. Fig. 4 shows the
spatial variation of the green and blue water footprint
for the rice production.
Fig. 4: Green water footprint (a) and blue water
footprint (b) of kharif rice crop during the cropping
year 2015-16
5. CONCLUSION
This study suggests an approach to estimate and
evaluate the water footprint for crop production using
remote sensing data and techniques at regional level.
However, the estimation is highly dependent on the
meteorological parameters and slight change in these
parameters can cause a significant difference in the
end result over space and time. Though, acquiring
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high spatial and high temporal data together, is a
constraint of this study, yet, the simple approach
discussed here can be applied for larger regions and
can be validated with the result obtained from a
greater number of station data and institutional data
which provides irrigation information. Successful
quantification of water usage can help in proper water
management practices including the irrigation
planning.
6. REFERENCES
[1] A. K. Chapagain and A. Y. Hoekstra, “Water
footprint of nations. Volume 1 : Main
report,” Value Water Res. Rep. Ser., vol. 1,
no. 16, pp. 1–80, 2004.
[2] A. K. Chapagain and A. Y. Hoekstra, “The
blue, green and grey water footprint of rice
from production and consumption
perspectives,” Ecol. Econ., vol. 70, no. 4, pp.
749–758, 2011.
[3] S. Shrestha, V. P. Pandey, C. Chanamai, and
D. K. Ghosh, “Green, Blue and Grey Water
Footprints of Primary Crops Production in
Nepal,” Water Resour. Manag., vol. 27, no.
15, pp. 5223–5243, Dec. 2013.
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footprint of crop production for different
crop structures in the Hebei southern plain,
North China,” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci, vol.
21, pp. 3061–3069, 2017.
[5] M. M. Mekonnen and A. Y. Hoekstra, “The
green, blue and grey water footprint of crops
and derived crop products,” Hydrol. Earth
Syst. Sci., vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 1577–1600,
2011.
[6] J. Doorenbos and W. O. Pruitt, “Guidelines
for predicting crop water requirements,”
1977.
[7] US Department of Agriculture (USDA),
“Irrigation Water Requirements,” in Part
623 National Engineering Handbook, 1993.
[8] A. Y. Hoekstra, A. K. Chapagain, M. M.
Aldaya, and M. M. Mekonnen, “The WaTer
FooTprinT assessmenT manual,” London,
UK, 2011.