Application of remote sensing techniques in locating dry and irrigated farmland parcels

For structuring national irrigation policies and determining the exact yield production shares separately generated from irrigated and unirrigated farmland practices fast and simple to employ methods are of great importance. In this work, through utilizing entire satellite image frames, with no masking or cropping any parts out, a local, parcel-based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) means and variance techniques´ mapping abilities were investigated. This was the preliminary stage in the delineation of irrigated and non-irrigated parcels. Although, even at this phase we obtained mapping results with reasonably high precision, a further process was performed using Land Surface Temperature (LST) data retrieved from Landsat 8 satellite images. LST tuning up produced irrigated areas to be mapped with accuracy rates escalating above 89%. The results obtained suggest that the NDVI, NDMI means and variance approach coupled up along with LST data holds the capacity to assist in building up trustworthy agrarian statistics for TARBIL project and in formation of a robust Agricultural Geographic Information System on national basis.