This work provides a description of the research conducted to assess methods for the discrimination between irrigated and rainfed open-tree canopies using advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection radiometer (ASTER) satellite imagery and discrete anisotropic radiative transfer (DART) radiative transfer 3D simulation model. Summer and winter ASTER images were acquired over a study area...

Irrigation is crucial to agriculture in arid and semi-arid areas and significantly contributes to crop development, food diversity and the sustainability of agro-ecosystems. For a specific crop, the separation of its irrigated and rainfed areas is difficult, because their phenology is similar and therefore less distinguishable, especially when there are phenology shifts due to various factors, ...

With growing environmental and energy concerns, Jatropha plantations are promoted in degraded/waste lands for the biodiesel production. Nutrient rich nonedible deoiled seed cake, a by-product of Jatropha left out after oil extraction was evaluated at the ICRISAT centre at Patancheru, India as an environment friendly source of nutrients for rainy season maize and soybean followed by postrain...

Rainfed agriculture occupies 68% of India’s cultivated area and supports 40% of the human and 60% of the livestock population. It produces 445 of the food requirement, thus has and will continue to play a critical role in India’s food security. However, aberrant behaviour of monsoon rainfall, eroded and degraded soils with multiple nutrient and water deficiencies, declining ground water table a...

Rainfed agriculture is practised on 80% of the world’s agricultural area and generates 60–70% of the world’s staple food1 (FAOSTAT, 2005). In semi-arid and dry subhumid zones, rainfed agriculture dominates food production systems, and water is a key limiting factor to crop growth (SEI, 2005). Since approximately 70% of the world’s poor are women, the importance of rainfed sources of food weighs...

soil erosion by water is the main factor of land degradation, particularly in semi-arid regions where soil productivity is usually low and lowering soil quality can severely decrease crops yields. this study was done in an area of 900 km2 in the semi-arid agricultural region of hashtroud in northwestern iran to determine the relationship between soil productivity and soil erodibility. wheat gra...

soil conservation is one of the most important regulative functions of natural ecosystems. this function is of high importance in taleghan watershed due to high erosion quantity and sediment accumulation in taleghan dam reservoir. soil loss reduction, sedimentation control and fertility conservation were considered as different aspects of soil conservation. effect of land use and vegetation cov...

This paper concerns an old soils report produced using agronomical approach. The territory studied spans continuous parts of Spain’s Huesca and Zaragoza provinces includes the Violada area. Spanish Ministry Agriculture collected data from 1975 to 1978 through its now-defunct agency, National Institute for Agrarian Reform Development (IRYDA), which was in charge irrigation works Spain. surface a...