Estimation of actual irrigation area using remote sensing monitoring method in Hetao Irrigation District

Hetao Irrigation District, located in Bayan nur city of Inner Mongolia, is one of the largest irrigation areas in Asia. Because of little rainfall and large evaporation, lack of water resources has become one of the main factors which restrict the development of the local economy. Real-time monitoring of the actual irrigation area can contribute to efficient allocation of water and soil resources. This article selected four rounds of images to calculate MPDI and build a spectral feature space. By comparing the estimated and statistical water volume, the best estimation accuracy reached to 92.8%. And a good agreement was conducted between MPDI and soil moisture content on July 20. The result showed that MPDI was conducive to the real-time monitoring of actual irrigation area.