Measurement of Water Productivity in Seasonal Floodplain Beel Area

Abstract

Water scarcity is becoming a central issue in agricultural activities around the world. As agriculture is one of the major consumers of freshwater, more yield or output using same or less amount of water has become the global interest. Therefore water productivity (WP) is also considered as an indicator of agricultural productivity. Several research works have been conducted on WP values of different yields, tools and technologies to improve WP. Most of the studies on water productivity considered the crop productivity using limited water resource and searched for better technologies for improving crop water productivity. Researchers also concentrated on improving irrigation efficiency or water use efficiency at field level for irrigation through water management and for yielding more crops. But there is a research gap in assessing values of water productivity in aquatic ecosystems especially floodplain areas. A floodplain area remains dry and flooded in two different seasons. Thus, a combined valuation of aquatic resources and rice production in two different seasons are very important to measure the efficient usages of the lands. So, this study deals with how to measure annual aggregate water productivity for dry season and flood season in a floodplain beel area.