Use of Spot data in the management of large irrigation areas in Pakistan
Utilisation des données SPOT pour l'aide à la gestion des grands périmètres irrigués au Pakistan
Résumé
In the next coming years, irrigated agriculture will be increasingly indispensable to meet the needs of growing population for foods supply. However, irrigated agriculture has to face with very critical problems of low productivity and irrigation-induced waterlogging and salinity that threaten the long-term sustainability of irrigated areas. IIMI and Cemagref are working together on a project in Pakistan to build up an integrated tool, based on hydraulic, economy, farming practices and also remote-sensing and GIS, in order to improve the efficiency of irrigation management. SPOT satellites images provide up-to-date imagemaps which are used as a cartographic reference for the design of the GIS data-base. The images also allow to calculate land-use and salinity parameters which are used as input variables in the models developed to build up the integrated tool.