Remote Sensing for irrigation performance assessment : a demonstration project for the Nilo Coelho Irrigation Project, Brazil

Irrigation performance indicators can help managers to understand how an irrigation scheme operates under actual field conditions. By means of remote sensing data, the opportunity arises to study the crop growing conditions at a range of scales: namely from field scale to scheme level. Landsat and NOAA sattelite data have been used to calculate actual and potential crop evaportranspiration, soil moisture and biomass growth. This will help the management team to let focus their field engineers on specific pumping units, and discuss with the farmers their irrigation practices.