CROP DAMAGE ASSESSMENT IN FLOOD INUNDATED AREA OF MORIGAON DISTRICT OF ASSAM

Abstract. Cropping System Analysis is essential for studying the sustainability of Agriculture. Remote sensing technology provide continuous and synoptic observations of crop area over large extent and substantial contribution in monitoring, evaluating and forecasting of crop and its damage assessment both in cloud and cloud-free environment. Geo-stationary satellites like Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can penetrate through clouds hence it help in assessment of crop even in hazy atmospheric circumstances like fog, smog, light rain, mist etc. The present study reviews cropping pattern and crop rotation of of Morigaon District of Assam. Landsat OLI- 8 multi-spectral data , sentinel 2 multi-spectral and sentinel- 1 SAR data was collected during crop year 2015, 2016 and 2017. The microwave SAR data was used for the classification of crop area for Kharif season due to unavailability of optical cloud free data and also helps in estimation of flood water propagation and its extent and its significant loss to agriculture crop. The result of the pilot study shows that integration of SAR data and GIS environment can be exploited in an efficient way to assess the crop damage area due to flood. Block-wise flood inundation statistics have been derived. This study can be extended to other states/ districts as data collected by satellite can be standardized, the data are reliably objective.