Agricultural Irrigation Impacts on Land Surface Characteristics Detected From Satellite Data Products in Jilin Province, China

Abstract

Today, the impact of irrigation on land surface attributes is not well documented. Existing studies are focused on meteorological observations and modeling. This paper aims to validate whether satellite observations are capable of detecting the impact of irrigation on land surface attributes. We used satellite observations to estimate land surface parameters, including surface albedo, land surface temperature (LST), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), soil moisture (SM), and evapotranspiration (ET) for the irrigation agriculture system. This study has two objectives: first, determining if satellite observations can detect the irrigation impact on land surface attributes; and second, to quantitatively evaluate the land surface attributes under different irrigation intensities. Results show that from 2000 to 2008 the land surface parameters of irrigated areas had obvious intra-annual variations, and highly irrigated areas feature a corresponding lower albedo and LST, higher soil moisture, NDVI and ET. This proves that satellite observations can effectively assess the irrigation impacts on land surface parameters and provide another valid method for determining the impact of irrigation on the local surface climate—especially in those regions where direct observations are limited or obscured by other factors, such as urbanization in China. © 2011, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.