Evaluation of Land Suitability for Different Irrigation Methods Using GIS Techniques

Abstract

For practising scientific agriculture, we should understand the potential and problems of resources at site specific level. In rainfed areas agriculture solely depends on rainfall, availability of irrigation water is the crucial factor which sustains the factor productivity. The study area was Annur block of Coimbatore district, belongs to agro ecological zone of Tamil Nadu uplands and it is located at 11°14´ to 11°23´ N latitude and 77°08´ to 77°13´ E longitude. To evaluate the suitability of land resources for different irrigation method, a parametric approach developed by Sys et al. (1991) was followed. For that a semi detailed land resource survey was taken up in Annur block of Coimbatore district at 1:50,000 scale using geocoded IRS-P6 PAN merged LISS-III data in FCC format. Based on the soil information, land suitability assessment was carried out and it revealed that about 1895 ha was not suitable for surface irrigation due to poor texture, slope and depth parameters. Those land units which were not suitable in surface irrigation system were found marginally suitable (1737 ha) and moderately suitable (158 ha) under drip irrigation system. Hence this land evaluation method will very much helpful in identifying areas which is suitable or not suitable for different irrigation methods so that we can increase the irrigation use efficiency by adopting suitable methods.