Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155

Remote sensing for irrigated agriculture: examples

from research and possible applications
Wim G.M. Bastiaanssen*, David J. Molden1, Ian W. Makin1
International Water Management Institute, P.O. Box 2075, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Accepted 10 January 2000

Abstract

Researchers in various international programs have studied the potential use of remotely sensed
data to obtain accurate information on land surface processes and conditions. These studies have
demonstrated that quantitative assessment of the soil-vegetation-atmosphere-transfer processes can
lead to a better understanding of the relationships between crop growth and water management.
Information on land surface can now be obtained at a wide range of spatial (5±5000 m) and
temporal resolutions (0.5±24 days). However, even though considerable progress has been made
over the past 20 years in research applications, remotely sensed data remain underutilized by
practicing water resource managers.
This paper seeks to bridge the gap between researchers and practitioners, ®rst, by illustrating
where research tools and techniques have practical applications and, second, by identifying real
problems that remote sensing could solve, albeit with additional research and development. As
freshwater becomes an increasingly scarce resource, all opportunities to better manage water uses,
particularly in irrigated agriculture, must be taken. An important challenge in the ®eld of water
resources is to utilize the timely, objective and accurate information provided by remote sensing.
# 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Remote sensing; Irrigated farming; Land management; Water resources management; Crop yield;
Water use ef®ciency; Water rights

1. Introduction

Irrigation is the largest user of freshwater Ð around 70% of withdrawals are for
irrigation. Irrigation produces 30 to 40% of the world's food crops on 17% of all arable
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: w.bastiaanssen@cgiar.org (W.G.M. Bastiaanssen), d.molden@cgiar.org (D.J. Molden),
i.makin@cgiar.org (I.W. Makin).
1
Co-corresponding author. Tel.: ‡94-1-867404; fax: ‡94-1-866854.

0378-3774/00/$ ± see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 7 8 - 3 7 7 4 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 8 0 - 9
138 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155

land (Seckler et al., 1998). To meet future demands for food with an increasingly scarce
water supply, we must manage our water resources better. When water supplies are
abundant and environmental pollution and degradation is no issue, water managers can
afford to be lax in its management. But, with growing population and subsequent need for
water for food, health and environment, there will be few places in the next century where
we have this luxury. Management and planning requires good information, and reliable
information on water resources use is also at present a scarce resource.
The task of providing reliable and accurate information from scales of farmer fields to
entire river basins, encompassing millions of hectares of irrigated land, is far from trivial.
Space-borne remote sensing measurements can, however, provide regular information on
agricultural and hydrological conditions of the land surface for vast areas. The capability
of remote sensing to identify and monitor crop growth and other related biophysical
parameters has undergone major improvements during the last 20 years, albeit several
issues remain unresolved. Comprehensive reviews on remote sensing applications for
agricultural water management are presented by Choudhury et al. (1994), Vidal and
Sagardoy (1995), Rango and Shalaby (1998), Bastiaanssen (1998) and Stewart et al.
(1999).
Presently, remote sensing is essentially a research tool and is rarely applied in the
management of irrigated agricultural systems either at a local scale or nationally. Two
main reasons for this gap may be identified: first, it is `supply driven' by the research
community which basically implies that researchers have influence on the sensor design
and flight characteristics (e.g. revisit period, spatial resolution). These decisions not
necessarily respond to the needs of practitioners in the field of water resources. Second,
discussions with water managers and policy makers have revealed that this community is
quite often unaware of the new technical possibilities, partly because the discussion about
remote sensing remains within the remote sensing community. This document is meant to
demonstrate the potential uses of remote sensing in managing water resources for
irrigated agriculture and to create awareness among potential users. It is based on the
extensive literature review presented in Bastiaanssen (1998).
The paper first presents possible applications of remote sensing in the field of irrigation
and water resources management. The second part of the paper provides scientists
background information on the developments in the field of remote sensing applicable to
irrigation. The paper concludes with recommendations on how to more quickly take
advantages of remote sensing capabilities to meet the present and near future challenges
of agricultural water resources management.

2. Possible applications of remote sensing

2.1. General

What kind of information can remote sensing provide? Remote sensing has the
possibility of offering important water resource-related information to policy makers,
managers, consultants, researchers and to the general public. This information is
potentially useful in legislation, planning, water allocation, performance assessment,
 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155 139

Table 1
Remote sensing products for water management

Remote sensing Water use/ Performance Strategic Water Operations Impact

deliverables productivity diagnosis planning rights assessment

Land use @ @
Irrigated area @ @ @ @ @ @
Crop type @ @ @ @ @
Crop yield @ @ @ @
Daily ET a @
Seasonal ET @ @ @ @
Crop stress @ @
Salinity @ @
Historical data @ @ @ @
a
ET ˆ evapotranspiration.

impact assessment, research, and in health and environment-related fields. Remote

sensing, with varying degrees of accuracy, has been able to provide information on land
use, irrigated area, crop type, biomass development, crop yield, crop water requirements,
crop evapotranspiration, salinity, water logging and river runoff. This information when
presented in the context of management can be extremely valuable for planning and
evaluation purposes (see Table 1).
Remote sensing has several advantages over field measurements. First, measurements
derived from remote sensing are objective; they are not based on opinions. Second, the
information is collected in a systematic way which allows time series and comparison
between schemes. Third, remote sensing covers a wide area such as entire river basins.
Ground studies are often confined to a small pilot area because of the expense and
logistical constraints. Fourth, information can be aggregated to give a bulk representation,
or disaggregated to very fine scales to provide more detailed and explanatory information
related to spatial uniformity. Fifth, information can be spatially represented through
geographic information systems, revealing information that is often not apparent when
information is provided in tabular form.

2.2. Water use and productivity

With competition for water increasing, it is important to understand patterns of water

use. How and when are water resources being consumed? Where are the opportunities for
water saving and how can the productivity be improved? How can water be best
redistributed in a given system to increase the overall productivity of the system? Water
accounting studies are used to identify the various users of water in the context of
basinwide water use, and the productivity of each use. Although these questions can be
solved through the framework of water accounting (Molden, 1997; Molden and
Sakthivadivel, 1999), the results rely substantially on proper input data.
To better understand irrigation in the context of basinwide water use, a water
accounting study was carried out at Kirindi Oya subbasin in Sri Lanka (Bakker et al.,
1999; Renault et al., 1999). Water resources in the area were primarily developed for
140 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155

Table 2
Actual evapotranspiration in the different agro-ecosystems of the Kirindi Oya cascade-tank system, Sri Lanka on
19 June 1995 (after Bandara et al., 1998)

Land use Area (ha) Actual evapotranspiration

(mm/d) (Mm)

Forest 2700 4.0 0.108

Shrubland 8475 3.7 0.316
Paddy 7620 5.1 0.389
Homesteads 2300 3.8 0.087
Marginal agriculture 3700 2.0 0.074
Water 1650 5.8 0.096
Total 26445 1.070

irrigation. Initial studies pointed out that the amount of water evaporated from non-crop
vegetation was in the same order of magnitude as that for rice and field and vegetable
crops grown in the area. Remote sensing was used to carry out a more in-depth analysis to
classify land types, and then to estimate evapotranspiration by land type. The results,
shown in Table 2, reveal that evapotranspiration of non-crop vegetation is significant, and
needs to be taken into consideration in the operations and performance assessment of
cascade-type irrigation systems in the humid tropics.
How productive are land and water uses? How can they be improved? Through the
identification of crops, areas under various crops, yields, and evapotranspiration, various
productivity indicators are derived. The International Water Management Institute
(IWMI) has developed a set of indicators focusing on productivity of land and water
resources (Molden et al., 1998). By combining the estimates of seasonal evapotranspira-
tion and yield derived from remote sensing, Bastiaanssen et al. (1999a) were able to study
the variations in the productivity of water measured as kg/m3 in the Bhakra Irrigation
System in India.

2.3. Performance diagnosis

Ideally, managers of irrigation systems should include regular performance monitoring

in their management techniques. This is further discussed in the section on operations.
Occasionally, the nature or complexity of a problem requires a more detailed diagnosis.
On such occasions, consultants or researchers are called to identify constraints to
performance. Satellite remote sensing, especially in large complex areas, can be a cost-
effective tool in diagnosing and establishing the performance of irrigation, especially
when consultants are familiar with the opportunities.
The performance of the Bhakra Irrigation System in Haryana, India was assessed using
remote sensing (Bastiaanssen et al., 1999b; Sakthivadivel et al., 1999). Spatial variations
in land and water productivity were presented, and explanations for their differences
forwarded through linkage with field observations and a hydrological model in a GIS
environment. It was found that differences in productivity were ascribed more to the
hydrological setting than to water delivery performance. Additionally, it was
 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155 141

Table 3
Coef®cient of variation or CV (standard deviation/mean, expressed as a percentage) of crop and water
parameters in seven different command areas. All calculations are based on Landsat Thematic Mapper data

Location Date Cropping Evapotranspiration, Crop stress,

intensity, CV CV CV

Nile Delta, Egypt 27 July 1987 10 10 15

Rio Tunuyan, Argentina 5 March 1990 20 6 6
Heihe River, China 9 July 1991 30 76 52
Niger River, Niger 18 September 1992 30 26 17
Haryana, India 4 December 1995 25 20 25
Kirindi Oya, Sri Lanka 19 June 1995 15 37 30
Gediz River, Turkey 29 August 1998 25 26 39

demonstrated that while productivity remains at reasonable levels, sustainability is in

question with the build up of salts, and rapid rise in groundwater levels in some areas and
falling groundwater levels in other areas.
The opportunity to rapidly compare the performance of different irrigation systems
measured with the same satellite sensor is provided in Table 3. The coefficient of
variation (CV) in cropping intensity, evapotranspiration, and conditions of crop stress for
climatological different regions are presented. The CV is usually applied to express
equity in access to water resources and irrigated land, being essential for water scarce
environments and in disadvantaged regions where progress in socio-economic
development is central. All schemes were analyzed with 30 m resolution Thematic
Mapper data calculated with the same energy balance algorithm, to make sure that
sampling, measuring and interpretation techniques are similar. The images used for the
presentation in Table 3 were not acquired during the same crop development phases, and
comprise different crops and command areas of different sizes with largely diverging
climate systems. The results have, therefore, a more indicative character, but nevertheless
demonstrate that systems can be potentially compared. Examples of other performance
assessment studies incorporating remote sensing data are presented in, for instance,
Moran, 1994, Menenti et al., 1995 and Roerink et al., 1997. A review of irrigation
performance literature is provided in Bastiaanssen and Bos (2000).

2.4. Strategic planning and water rights

With increasing pressures on water resources, patterns of water use are in a state of
change. It is essential to develop and rethink long-term strategies to meet challenges.
Strategic or long-term planning is implemented through legislation and policies. Strategic
water use requires good information on irrigated areas, cropping patterns, evaporative use
and historic use of water. Information from ground sources is often based on design data
rather than actual figures. Studies on irrigated areas taken from governmental water
agencies and satellites in Turkey, Argentina and Spain have indicated differences ranging
from 40 to 70%. Farmers usually adapt their cultivation practices to overall water
availability including groundwater, and the actual situations can differ from the planned
142 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155

situation. Here remote sensing provides an excellent means to fit into this process of
strategic planning at regional level.
Water rights is a key factor in allocating water and ensuring the supply of water for
those who have rights. Two basic problems of setting up a system of water rights are (i)
the definition of the right to water, and (ii) the adjudication of that right. When setting up
a system of water rights, water use obtained by remote sensing can be extremely useful in
determining which individual or group is presently or historically using water. And, after
water rights are in place, water use can be checked. This can be done through remote
sensing estimates of vegetation cover combined with a geographical database on water
rights. Parodi (1999) used spectral vegetation indices for the recognition of the irrigated
areas and compared this information with the official cadastral ownership and list of
water rights. They made technical assistance software available to the local water
federations in the Guadiana River Basin in Castilla la Mancha, Spain.
Remote sensing offers possibilities in the collection of fees and enforcement of
regulations. Water charges are sometimes based on crops and area under each crop; items
readily discerned by remote sensing. In some water scarce areas, planting of certain crops
or use of groundwater supplies are banned. Some farmers are allowed to consume only a
limited amount of groundwater to prevent mining of aquifer systems.

2.5. Operations

Performance assessment is an essential component of effective irrigation management.

Regular feedback of information from the field into water management decision making
can substantially improve the performance of water delivery services. However, obtaining
repeated objective evaluations about actual field conditions is difficult. Remote sensing
may now provide viable solutions in some situations, allowing repeated sampling of field
conditions in units as small as 100 ha. By regularly monitoring field wetness indicators,
system managers can modify decisions throughout an irrigation season based on field
moisture depletion and evaporation deficit. In systems with little flexibility in operations
(for example, the extensive supply-based systems of the Indus and Ganges basins), such
monitoring would assist managers to identify persistent deviations from scheduled
deliveries enabling more rapid diagnosis of causes of deviations from target.
In addition, regular performance assessments are necessary to maintain accountability,
that is making sure that service specifications are met. Information from remote sensing
can play an important role in determining whether the actual service provided meets the
targeted specification, with the important advantage that remotely sensed data is objective
and unbiased.
Irrigation system water allocations are, most often, based on assumptions about the
irrigated area, crop types, and the near-surface meteorological conditions that determine
crop water requirements. Hydraulic designs for canals are based on the peak flow rate
required to meet some minimum fraction of the crop water requirement. Remote sensing
enables regular updating of irrigated areas that tend to deviate substantially from the
original estimates of irrigation command areas. Cropping patterns may have changed due
to influences of market mechanisms, water logging, or scarcity due to restricted or
unreliable canal water supply. Even in demand-based systems, knowledge from field
 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155 143

Table 4
Irrigation performance of the Bhadra Project (after Thiruvengadachari and Sakthivadivel, 1997)

Parameters 1986±1987 1989±1990 1992±1993 1993±1994

Irrigated crop (ha) 73529 67366 88424 84412

Rice area (%) 56 51 69 69
Rice yield (kg/ha) 3800 5400 4700 4900
Water application (mm) 1060 1040 800 860
Productivity per unit of water delivered (kg/m3) 0.36 0.52 0.59 0.57

conditions, including crop stress, can help managers forecast how much water should be
released from the reservoir.

2.6. Impact assessment

Huge amounts of funds are invested in irrigation and drainage infrastructure with
different approaches to irrigation development (Horst, 1998). Which designs work and
should be continued or refined? What does not work and on what do successes depend?
These questions often cannot be adequately answered because of lack of information on
baseline conditions, and changes over time. Remote sensing offers a huge advantage in
this area as archived images (Landsat from 1972 to date and NOAA-AVHRR from 1982
to date) can be used to track these changes.
Project impact assessments require comparisons of the irrigation conditions before and
after project execution. Thiruvengadachari and Sakthivadivel (1997) performed a study
on cultivated areas, area under paddy, and crop yields after turn over of the Bhadra
irrigation project in Karnataka, India. By repeating the satellite data analysis before and
after project completion, they quantified the impact on irrigation performance (Table 4).
Productivity per unit of water increased from 0.36 kg/m3 of water delivered to 0.57 kg/m3
in 1994, an increase of 64%. Archived satellite data provides the opportunity to
reconstruct longer and continuous time series of irrigation conditions.

3. Brief background of remote sensing achievements in water resources research

3.1. Categorical steps

Satellites measure spectral radiance, they do not give direct information on yield,
salinity, or other information. There are a number of steps that must be taken to bring out
useful information. Fortunately, the end user does not always have to be involved in each
step of transforming spectral radiance to water resources management information, but at
least the user should know that several technical aspects are involved. For the end user, it
is useful to have a basic understanding of where the information comes from, the need for
training, and the relative accuracy of the information. The categorical steps between
spectral radiance measured by the satellite and the final irrigation information required
for planning and performance evaluation are identified in Fig. 1.
144 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155

Fig. 1. Disciplines and sequence of procedures needed to interpret satellite spectral measurements for use in
practical water management.

An atmospheric correction procedure is first needed to convert the at-satellite spectral

radiances to their at-surface counterparts, a discipline of radiation physicists. Differences
in spectral at-surface radiance form the basis for recognizing thematic object classes such
as irrigated land, crop types, forests and natural ecosystems. The identification of
thematic classes is usually based on three or more spectral bands. Spectral vegetation
indices can be obtained from two spectral bands in the red and near-infrared spectral
range. The use of vegetation indices can be improved if vegetation indices become less
sensitive for soil background reflectance and atmospheric perturbations (soil adjusted
vegetation index (SAVI) or soil and atmosphere resistant vegetation index (SARVI) are
applied). A good review is presented in Rondeaux et al., 1996.
Information from field surveys and physical-mathematical algorithms enable the
estimation of biophysical parameters such as fractional vegetation cover, leaf area index,
and surface temperature. A third hierarchical order in the remotely sensed signal
interpretation can be identified when several biophysical parameters are further integrated
 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155 145

to arrive at irrigation conditions such as crop yield and crop evapotranspiration. The final
stage is to integrate these parameters with ancillary data (e.g., canal flow data,
groundwater table fluctuations, precipitation) into indicators that can help decision
making.
Several satellites are now in earth orbit and are designated for measuring certain
terrestrial processes. As each satellite has its own overpass characteristics in terms of
return period, local overpass time, pixel size and number of spectral bands, the
applications vary (Table 5). A combination of spatial and temporal resolutions determines
the possible application. Agro-ecological zones are, for instance, preserved during a time
span of a few years and a limited number of images in an annual cycle are sufficient to
describe them whereas cloud conditions, which can vary every 30 min, require a large
number of images. Hence, a fleet of different sensors is required to make a range of
applications feasible.

3.2. Thematic object classes

Panchromatic satellite data currently have spatial resolutions of 2.0 (SPIN), 5.8 m
(Indian Remote Sensing Satellite, IRS) and 10 m (Satellite Pour' Observation de la Terre,
SPOT), and these data are valuable to deduce the location of roads, canals, ditches and
boundaries of individual fields, and small command areas. Black and white panchromatic
images are useful for describing cartographical changes due to construction and
encroachment of built-up areas or deserts. Crop identification at small farm plots
(<0.5 ha) should be done with multi-spectral images. Ground truth is imperative for
upgrading the information from spectral radiance to land cover and specific crop types.
The growth of GIS has greatly enhanced the opportunity to integrate conventional and
remote sensing data to form the basis for the development of digital expert systems (e.g.,
Kontoes et al., 1993). Computation by powerful systems allow the application of the
newest mathematical object classification techniques (neural networks, fuzzy logic,
probabilistic segmentation) to discern object classes. The overall transferability of
classification methods is very limited and a general guideline to classify land cover and
crop types does not exist.
There is no need for an explicit crop identification to make a map of the irrigated areas.
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration-Advanced Very High Resolution
Radiometer (NOAA-AVHRR) is providing vegetation indices on a regular basis and at
low costs, which make it suitable for land use determinations of large areas. Kite and
Droogers (1999) surveyed the major agro-ecological zones in the Gediz River Basin
(Turkey) using NDVI from AVHRR and merged it with digital elevation information.
Although small-scale activities such as the cultivation of vegetables will not be captured
with 1.1 km AVHRR images, this technique allows a fast delineation of a basin into the
major agro-ecosystems (Kite, 1995). NOAA-AVHRR has also been frequently applied at
continental scale (Fuller and Brown, 1996).
Identification of irrigated fields is not self-evident for humid climates with regular
showers and frequently overcast skies, although successes have been reported by using a
time series of satellite images. The inclusion of microwave data, insensitive to cloud
obstructions, could be elementary to measure land surface features under cloudy
 146
W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155
Table 5
Sensors or satellites that provide images suitable for agricultural water managementa

Purpose SPOT IRS TM MSS NOAA-AVHRR ERS-SAR Radarsat ERS-ALT ERS-ATSR Meteosat GOES GMS JERS-SAR

Cartographic information * * *
Irrigated area * * *
Cropping pattern * * * *
Land use * * * * * *
Leaf area index * * * * * *
Crop coef®cient * * * *
Transpiration coef®cient * * * * * *
Surface roughness * * *
Crop yield * * * * * *
Potential evapotranspiration * * * * * *
Actual evapotranspiration * * *
Surface moisture * * *
Root-zone moisture * * *
Soil salinity * * *
Water logging * * * * * *
River discharge * * *
Precipitation * * *
a
SPOT: Satellite pour l'Observation de la Terre; IRS: Indian Remote Sensing Satellite; TM: Thematic Mapper; MSS: Multi Spectral Scanner; NOAA: National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Satellite; AVHRR: Advanced Very High Resolution Satellite; ERS: European Remote Sensing Satellite; SAR: Synthetic
Aperture Radara; ALT: Altimeter; ATSR: Along-Track Scanning Radiometer; GOES: Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite; GMS: Geostationary
Meteorological Satellite; JERS: Japanese Earth Resources Satellite.
 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155 147

conditions. Chakraborty et al. (1997) for instance, identified four major types of lowland
cultivation practices prevailing in West Bengal (India) with a 90% classification accuracy
using three-date C-band data of the European Remote Sensing satellite ERS-1.

3.3. Biomass

Growth of biomass occurs through the mechanisms of photosynthesis and carbon

assimilation, which needs light in the visible part of the spectrum, besides carbon dioxide
and water as the major inputs. Chlorophyll absorbs light from 0.4 to 0.7 mm and this
photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) can be approximated from the total solar radiation.
The Absorbed PAR (APAR) varies with the vegetation density, as well as with PAR. The
ratio of APAR/PAR can be computed on a pixel-by-pixel basis using NDVI from remote
sensing data (Asrar et al., 1992). Satellite measurements of clouds (for PAR) being
combined with NDVI (for APAR/PAR) can thus give us estimates of APAR. Monteith
(1972) pioneered the concept of calculating net primary biomass production as a function
of APAR and introduced the growth efficiency e as the biomass production/APAR
fraction. This method will give the biospheric growth including forests, wetlands,
rangelands, rain-fed cropped areas and irrigated cropped areas. As the river basin is
becoming the major framework for decision making on water management issues, and
water has to be shared by competing users, this method allows us to get the biomass
productivity of the entire area, rather than of the crops alone (e.g., Prince and Goward,
1995).

3.4. Crop yield

The concept of assimilating remote sensing data in mathematical/physical crop yield

models (Bouman, 1992) is attractive to modeling crop growth concurrently. For instance,
Moran et al. (1995) used LAI and evapotranspiration from remote sensing data to update
the model parameters of a physiologically-based crop yield simulation model at field
scale. If these crop growth models or their input data are not available, simplified
statistical relationships can be used. Single date NDVI images acquired during the
heading stage of grain crops have shown to be extremely profitable (e.g., Murthy et al.,
1996, Thiruvengadachari and Sakthivadivel, 1997). Data from crop cutting experiments
are necessary to validate these types of statistical relationships (e.g., Thiruvengadachari
et al., 1997; Ambast et al., 1999). It is interesting to note that the latter two publications
came up with different regression models, although the crop type (wheat), season (rabi
1995±96) and study area (Haryana) were similar. The former IRS-based study gave
Yieldwheatˆ10.99NDVI-3.75, whereas, the TM-based study used Yieldwheatˆ91.1NDVI-
23.8. This can be explained partly by using different sensors (Indian Remote Sensing
Satellite versus Thematic Mapper), different corrections for atmospheric influences, and
differences in spectral bands and acquisition dates. Despite the simplicity of this
empirical relationship, they can prove efficient for predicting (non-) uniformity in crop
yields. The lesson learned here is that physiologically based solutions can have more use
on the longer term. One of these methods is the physiologically based approach of
biomass growth (Monteith, 1972). Inclusion of the harvest index (grain yield/total above
148 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155

ground biomass) makes the interpretation of net primary production into grain yields
feasible (Bastiaanssen and Ali, 2000).

3.5. Evapotranspiration

The close dependence of surface temperature on actual evapotranspiration makes

thermal remote sensing suitable for crop consumptive use studies. Jackson et al. (1977)
performed pioneering work on thermal infrared applications for a wheat mono-cropping
system. Several new methods have been developed afterwards and a review on
evapotranspiration algorithms using remotely sensed data is given by Kustas and Norman
(1996). Among the newest models is the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land
(SEBAL) for heterogeneous terrain. SEBAL describes the spatial variability of most
micro-meteorological variables with semi-empirical functions. SEBAL can be applied for
diverse agro-ecosystems and does not require ancillary information on land use or crop
types (Bastiaanssen et al., 1998). The validation efforts have shown that the error at a 1 ha
scale varies between 10 and 20% and that the uncertainty diminishes with increasing
scale. For an area of 1000 ha, the error is reduced to 5% and for regions of 1 million ha of
farmland, the error becomes negligibly small.
Crop stress indicators are meant to circumvent the need to solve the surface energy
balance explicitly, for example, Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI) (Jackson et al., 1981)
and Water Deficit Index (WDI) (Moran et al., 1994). The WDI approach relies on linear
interpolation between the four corners of a trapezoid between Soil Adjusted Vegetation
Index (SAVI) and a surrogate of remotely sensed surface temperature. The quantification
of the trapezoid corners requires meteorological parameters to be measured at
observation height and assumes that the values do not change with the land wetness
and land use conditions. The potential evapotranspiration is usually computed from
reference evapotranspiration and a crop coefficient kc (Doorenbos and Pruitt, 1977). SAVI
can be taken to spatio-temporally extrapolate the crop coefficient, if kc is locally
calibrated (e.g., Neale et al., 1989; Bausch, 1995). To avoid experiments dedicated to
calibrate kc values, kc can also be taken directly from satellite measurements (e.g., D'Urso
and Santini, 1996).

3.6. Soil moisture

Microwave techniques can provide estimates of the near-surface soil water content
(e.g., Engman and Chauhan, 1995; Nojuki and Enthekabi, 1996; Schmugge, 1999). Soil
moisture estimates can be obtained most successfully with airborne passive radiometers
for soil depths between 0 and 10 cm. This shallow depth is unfortunately insufficient to
obtain root zone soil water storage. Many crops root upto 1±2 m depth. Van and Oevelen
(1998) demonstrated that by combining airborne active microwave radar measurements
with 68 cm waves (P band), the possibility arises to estimate soil moisture integrated over
a layer 17 cm deep.
A direct application to retrieve soil water content of the root zone is not operationally
feasible, but crop water stress indicators based on energy partitioning can be used as a
first approximation. Volumetric soil moisture can be estimated from the evaporative
 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155 149

Fig. 2. Relationships between volumetric soil water content in the root zone and evaporative fraction obtained
from FIFE and EFEDA datasets.

fraction (latent heat/net available energy) using a statistical relationship between

evaporative fraction and soil moisture. The results for two large-scale field campaigns
dedicated to soil moisture-evaporation-biomass interactions, FIFE (Smith et al., 1992)
and EFEDA (Bastiaanssen et al., 1997) are depicted in Fig. 2.

3.7. Soil salinity

The state of the art in salinity mapping is that highly saline areas can be separated from
non-salinized areas (e.g., Vidal and Sagardoy, 1995). Most of the published investigations
based on remote sensing distinguish only three to four classes of soil salinity, after
consulting geomorphologic or soil degradation maps or by means of conventional time-
consuming and laborious field surveys. Current sensors and interpretation algorithms do
not allow the detection of intermediate to medium salinity levels. Salinization affects the
leaf angle orientation (leaf roll) and increased chlorosis, which is best-observed in the
near and middle infrared bands (Steven et al., 1992). The final stage of soil salinization is
an increased brightness, detectable from the visible part of the spectrum (albedo high, leaf
area index low). A new approach to quantify the physical appearances through
biophysical parameters of salt-afflicted crops (e.g., surface albedo, fractional vegetation
coverage, LAI, surface resistance, evaporative fraction) was tested by Ambast et al.
(1999) and is worth expanding further. A simple combination of multi-spectral bands
without any classifier provides meaningful information. A quantitative interpretation into
soil salinity classes can be made after extensive field visits. More research is needed for a
rapid appraisal of salinity from satellite measurements.

3.8. Precipitation

Rainfall patterns are highly variable in space and time, and generally rain gauge
networks in river basins and catchments do not accurately measure regional and seasonal
rainfall. Griffith et al. (1978) recognized the transient evolution and extent of cloud-top
temperature as a tool to infer convective activity. Dugdale and Milford (1986) developed
the concept of cold cloud duration (CCD), using the thermal channel of Meteosat, to
150 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155

generate time series of cloud temperatures for tropical altitudes where most rainfall
comes from large convective storms. They suggested that the duration above a threshold
temperature value is representative of the amount of rain that is generated. The success of
the regression between CCD and rainfall varies with the threshold temperature above
which rain occurs (e.g., Stewart et al., 1995). Although there is an essential amount of
empiricism included in this methodology, it helps to interpret rainfall intensities at
unsampled locations between gauges in a network of rain gauges. Successful applications
have been reported in Mexico (Negri et al., 1993) and the Sahel (Rosema, 1990). Petty
(1995) summarized the current status of retrieving rainfall information from satellites.
Simmers (1996) concluded, `the determination of rain rate at the surface from satellite
measurements is still an unresolved problem.' It is expected that the recently launched
Tropical Rainfall Mission satellite (TRMM) dedicated for precipitation mapping will
boost research of this parameter further.

3.9. Runoff

The outflow from rivers to seas is an important aspect of management of water

resources at river-basin level. Uncommitted outflow should be prevented if there is no
sufficient water in the basin for irrigation or other water-demanding sectors. River flow
cannot be measured remotely; however, the width of the riverbed and height of the water
level can be assessed from space-borne sensors. Imhof et al. (1987) mapped flood
boundaries along the lower Ganges River by using L-band radar data in association with
Landsat MSS data. Smith (1997) also demonstrated that C-band radar data with a spatial
resolution of 12.5 m could be helpful. Smith provided a non-linear relationship between
river width and river discharge so that they could interpret the estimated width into
discharge. Vorosmarthy et al. (1996) and Choudhury et al. (2000) used passive microwave
data from Nimbus (37 GHz) with pixels of tens of kilometers to estimate the span width
of the Amazon and the Rio de la Plata, respectively. These pixel sizes are only applicable
for larger rivers. Research on this issue is still continuing.
The interim conclusion of this section is that different classes of robustness can be
identified for the assessment of the water resources (see Table 6).

4. Building the capability for remote sensing

Fig. 1 illustrates the various interdisciplinary steps between the raw satellite signals and
water resources managers as end users. Clearly, these steps do not belong to classical
water resources management engineering. Either remote sensing scientists should make
themselves familiar with aspects of water resources management or engineers should be
more acquainted with remote sensing. As organizations adapt to the information age, and
adopt emerging technologies such as cartography and GIS systems, water professionals
should also be aware of the possibilities of remote sensing.
High cost and the need of skilled workers may be serious constraints to the adoption of
remote sensing technology. Additionally, in some cases, the science of remote sensing has
not advanced far enough to operationalize the technique. And, in addition, remote sensing
 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155 151

Table 6
Derivation of irrigation and water resources conditions from remote sensing being useful for irrigation
management

Topic Accuracy Field information Currently best possible method

Biomass High Limited APAR and light use ef®ciency

Crop yield Good Reduced Biomass and harvest index
Potential evapotranspiration Good Limited Reference evapotranspiration
and crop coef®cient
Potential transpiration Moderate Limited Leaf area index and potential
evapotranspiration
Actual evapotranspiration Good Limited SEBAL algorithm
Crop stress indicators Good Substantial Water de®cit index
Surface soil moisture Good Limited Air borne microwave
radiometry
Root zone moisture Moderate Limited Water de®cit index, evaporative
fraction
Soil salinity Low High Synergetic measurements in
vis, nir, tir, mw range
Precipitation Low High Cold cloud duration (future
TRMM satellite)
Runoff Low Reduced C band radar and laser altimeter

has not become `user friendly.' It is not easy to apply. The cost of remote sensing images,
as well as hardware and software costs are decreasing rapidly. Landsat-5 Thematic
Mapper images are sold at a commercial rate of US$ 4400 per full scene, but the images
of its successor Landsat-7, (operational since April 1999) are available for US$ 600. This
is a 18-fold reduction in price, while the product has improved spectrally and spatially.
Since 1992, NOAA-AVHRR has been available, as 10-day composites, free of costs on
the Internet. The Internet also provides daily AVHRR data from 1982 onwards, but this
data is raw. The total cost of an AVHRR ground station, which catches the signal from the
satellite when it passes over, is approximately US$ 10,000. The new ASTER radiometer
is part of NASA'S Mission to Planet Earth Program and will be available free of costs on
the Internet. ASTER has 14 bands dedicated to hydrology.
Satellite images can be processed on powerful personal computers and relatively
simple and low-cost software packages. Main frames are no longer required to analyze
huge data arrays collected by the remote sensors. It still incurs a substantial cost to train
and employ skilled technicians, but if large areas can be covered during the analysis, the
costs per unit area goes down. A crop identification study and an assessment of crop yield
with 30 m resolution in India were done at a unit cost of 3 US cents per hectare. Crop
consumptive use on a seasonal basis was estimates with 1 km resolution images at a unit
cost of 1 US cent per hectare.
The authors are aware that some River Basin Authorities in Sri Lanka and Morocco are
equipped with first class hardware and software facilities. Although it is not strictly
necessary that each and every irrigation project has a remote sensing division, these
organizations felt that it worthwhile to have their own capabilities. While it may be
justified in a large irrigated area, say of 1 million ha, remote sensing is clearly not cost-
152 W.G.M. Bastiaanssen et al. / Agricultural Water Management 46 (2000) 137±155

effective at this point in time for a 5000 ha system to have its own remote sensing arm.
There are other means of providing this service. The consultancy sector could perform
analysis such as evaporation, yields, land use on a large scale, and sell this information
when needed. Alternatively, a government agency such as a Meteorology Department
could be set up to provide service to governmental and non-governmental organizations
involved in managing water resources. First attempts in the latter direction are currently
tested in Sri Lanka.

5. Conclusions and future directions

Irrigation brings about an intimate relation among people (by alleviating poverty and
providing food, jobs, land holdings, and community development), crops (irrigated areas,
yield, cash, vegetables, crop type, and water needs) and water issues (crop water use, land
wetness, water logging, and land degradation). We think it is possible to supply relevant,
spatially distributed and updated information on these complex issues from remote
sensing measurements. Presently, remote sensing remains essentially a research tool and
is rarely applied to assist in the management of agricultural systems or other aspects of
allocating water in river basin systems. Remote sensing software will become more user
friendly, making it accessible to more people of various disciplines. This paper has shown
that several remote sensing algorithms are sufficiently matured, from a technical point of
view, and can be tested on economics and the knowledge transferred to irrigation and
basin management.
Although some encouraging studies have appeared in recent literature on water
resources management, application and demonstration studies should ensue to refine and
test the suggested methods. Demonstration projects need to be formulated with the
participation of potential end users to show the power of surveying from space, to allow
remote sensing to move from being a specialized research tool to become an important
asset for irrigation and water resources management.

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