Groundwater Management for Irrigated Agriculture Through Geospatial Techniques

Groundwater irrigation plays an important role in sustainable agricultural development through protective shield during droughts and dry spells and intensifying and diversifying of the cropping system. The measuring, monitoring, and modeling of groundwater availability, condition, and distribution are the major step to formulate a sustainable groundwater management plan for agricultural use. The conventional methods to manage groundwater are tedious and costly. However, the modernization of geospatial techniques, namely, remote sensing (RS), geographic information system (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS), etc., along with differential proximity sensing has enabled groundwater management both spatially and temporally. It can help in surveying, analyzing, detecting, differentiating, characterizing, mapping, monitoring, and modeling of the groundwater quantity, quality, distribution, extent, and association of groundwater resources. The major interventions of geospatial techniques in groundwater management are groundwater quality assessment, spatial zonation for irrigation, groundwater prospects mapping, dynamicity of groundwater storage, saltwater intrusion, etc. These applications have made a huge impact on groundwater management for crop and land resources on a sustainable basis. The multiparametric approach of geospatial techniques can minimize the time, labor, and money and thereby enable quick decision-making for efficient water resources management. However RS data has some inherent limitations of spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution, which sometimes makes it difficult to understand and asses the groundwater condition. Still, it is very important for the areas/regions especially developing nations where data scarcity in terms of quantity and quality is often an obstacle for solving real-world water problems. This chapter highlights the various approaches of groundwater management for irrigated agriculture using geospatial tools and techniques.