The impact of rice cultivation in green and blue water on the economic productivity of the valley region of Manipur, India

ABSTRACT

Rice is a staple food for the vast majority of the world’s population and one of the world’s largest consumers of freshwater. Unfortunately, climate change will further worsen the demand for blue water demand, particularly for rice cultivation needs to be closely monitored. Our study assessed the spatial water footprint (WF) of rice for the valley region of Manipur using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer Evapotranspiration (MOD16) and Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS) datasets. In addition, rice’s economic water productivity of green and blue water was evaluated. Results showed an average spatial WF ranging from 772.14 to 1456.23 m³/tonne. According to data comparing the national average, 90% of the valley area has a lower WF value than the country as a whole. The green and blue WF of rice ranges from 596.62 m³/tonne to 673.42 m³/tonne and 65.79 m³/tonne to 767.65 m³/tonne, respectively. The spatial variation of the blue WF is due to the amount of rainfall and irrigation application within the study area. The green economic water productivity is getting lower than the blue economic water productivity due to green water’s lesser economic scarcity than blue water. This study can help plan crop allocation in favour of water availability by water management authorities on economic value calculations.

KEYWORDS:

• MOD16
• CHIRPS
• rice
• water footprint

Acknowledgments

We thank the Department of Agriculture, Manipur, and the Directorate of Environment and Climate Change, Manipur, for providing crop-related and weather data for running this project. We also thank NASA and CHIRPS for providing the dataset through the respective archives. We will be grateful to the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the Government of India and the National Institute of Technology Manipur for PhD fellowship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.