Remotely Sensed Changes in Crop Production over India

A number of studies based on long-term Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from the NOAA/AVHRR have documented an increase in terrestrial photosynthesis over extended regions of the globe and a number of driving factors have been invoked to explain this greening. In India the increase in photosynthetic activity corresponds to the expansion of irrigation following the technological innovations brought about by the Green Revolution, providing one of the most spatially extensive examples of large-scale greening induced by land use and land cover changes [1, 2]. In India these land cover changes have resulted in progressive increases in food grain production. However, aggregated agricultural production statistics indicate that the rate of food grain production has recently slowed down. In this paper we provide independent evidence of the agricultural deceleration in India analyzing the interannual variability in long term (1982-2006) record of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (NOAA/AVHRR) together with climate, land use data.