Detection of the type of irrigation water source in Irrigation District 017 La Laguna, Mexico using remote sensing.

Abstract

Irrigation Districts (ID) and Irrigation Units (IU) share borders that are not physically defined. Through remote sensing, it is feasible to know these limits and to estimate irrigated areas. The objective of this work was to discriminate, based on remote sensing techniques, the irrigated surface of both ID and IU in La Laguna region, Mexico, and to estimate irrigation volumes used by type of source (surface for ID and underground for IU). Sentinel-2 2018 satellite images were used to define the polygons of the plots, and together with the calculation of the Normalized Differential Vegetation Index, the irrigated areas were defined. In order to know the irrigation volume, the agricultural statistics of National Water Commission were used. Crop evapotranspiration was estimated using the Penman-Monteith model, with normal climatic databases from the Rapid Climatic Information Extractor. Estimated surface were 64,783.17 ha in the ID and 34,989.99 ha corresponds to the IU, a total of 99,773.16 ha. Consequently, the volume used by type of source was 680.41 Mm³ yr⁻¹ for IU and 345.62 Mm³ yr⁻¹ for ID. In spring-summer, 403.53 Mm³ yr⁻¹ was estimated and, in the fall-winter 78.14 Mm³ yr⁻¹. With sentinel-2 satellite images were defined agriculture areas in order to estimate irrigation surface and water volume used by kind of source, surface and ground water.