Assessment of Hailstorm Damage in Wheat Crop Using Remote Sensing

Heavy rainfall and hailstorm events occurred in major wheat-growing areas of India during February and March 2015 causing large-scale damages to the crop. An attempt was made to assess the impact of hailstorms in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (UP), Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (MP) using remote sensing data. Multi-year remote sensing data from Resourcesat 2 AWiFS was used for the purpose. Wheat crop map, generated by the operational FASAL project, was used in the study. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) deviation images were generated from the NDVI images of a similar period in 2014 and 2015. This was combined with the gridded data of cumulative rainfall during the period. The logical modelling approach was used for damage classification into normal, mild, moderate and severe. It was found that the northern and southern districts in Haryana were severely affected due to rainfall/ hailstorm. Eastern Rajasthan and western MP were also highly affected. Western UP was mildly affected. Crop cutting experiments (CCE) were carried out in two districts of MP. The CCE data showed that the affected fields had 7% lower yield than the unaffected fields. Empirical yield model was developed between wheat yield and NDVI using CCE data. This model was used to compute the loss in state-level wheat production. This showed that there was a reduction of 8.4% in national wheat production. The production loss estimated through this method matched with the Government estimates.