Monitoring Sustainability of Reclamation of Sodic Soils at Plot Level Using High Resolution Satellite Data

Soil salinity poses a serious threat for sustainable agricultural production. Out of 6.73 million ha salt affected soils in India, nearly 3.8 million ha is occupied by sodiclands, primarily spread in the Indo-Gangetic alluvial plains in the states of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and parts of Bihar and Rajasthan. In order to utilize these lands, Government of Uttar Pradesh through Uttar Pradesh Bhumi Sudhar Nigam, has been executing a project for reclamation of about 0.24 million ha of sodicland in seventeen districts of the state. Remote Sensing Applications Centre, Uttar Pradesh has been assigned the responsibility of identification and mapping of sodiclands at village level for reclamation and thereafter monitoring land use changes in reclaimed sodic plots in third/fourth year of reclamation. To assess the sustainability of reclamation after three/four years, randomly selected five villages reclaimed in the year 2000, studied for land use/land cover changes using IRS-1D LISS-III and PAN merged satellite data of Rabi (winter) season. The study reveals that 86 per cent of the earlier barren sodic plots were under crop. In the case of single and double cropped sodic plots, 97 per cent were under crop in third/fourth year after reclamation. The results thus indicate the sustainability of sodicland reclamation taken up under the project.