#India: areas under irrigation map

After being unhappy with the maps in Brahma Chellaney’s book Water: Asia's New Battleground, I decided to create my own map of areas under irrigation in India.

For this map, I used irrigation data from the global map of irrigation areas from AQUASTAT, the FAO's global information system on water and agriculture.  Data shows the percentage of irrigated land per 5 arcmin cell, which is approximately 8547 hectares: someone check my calculations!

Source: Stefan Siebert, Petra Döll, Sebastian Feick, Jippe Hoogeveen and Karen Frenken (2007) Global Map of Irrigation Areas version 4.0.1. Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany / Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy

The number of cells in the AQUASTAT data set is huge: 4320 columns x 1260 rows = 5,443,200 cells.  To bring this down to size, I clipped the map to the area of India.  Even so, I had more data than ArcMap could handle (max: 10,000 items) in computing equal percentage intervals (see the map legend).  Nonetheless, the resulting map corresponded well to the Global Map of Irrigated Ares.  The Ganges River basin is the most irrigated area in the world.

You may download the map of irrigated areas in India in JPEG format or the map of irrigated areas of India in PDF format. Alternatively, if you would like to muck around with the map itself, download the ArcMap document showing irrigated areas of India.

Ganges

I was channel surfing (who says that the gene for channel surfing is on the Y chromosome?) and discovered a 3-part documentary called Ganges being shown on the Travel Channel. This documentary was produced by the BBC.

Rivers of India

One recurring theme was the co-existence of humans and animals, whether it was thieving macaques in Rishikesh or ducks being herded. The most interesting part featured fishermen using tethered otters to chase fish  [VIDEO] (not that I support tethering creatures that were meant to swim free). The otters were kept hungry in order to chase fish. Once the fishermen made their haul, they lifted up the wooden framed net to make sure that the otters didn't get in. However, the otters were treated to the leftovers.

Otter fishing on the Ganges

India never looked so picturesque. While the ecological problems were discussed, we were not presented with images of pollution and misery. Instead, we were treated to images of the Gangetic dolphin swimming in the waters of the Ganges.

Gangetic dolphin

While I have not listened to NPR's radio documentary The Ganges: A Journey into India (broadcast in April 2008), it is evident from the text descriptions that NPR had a need (or an agenda?) to portray India as a problem country.

The Beeb's TV documentary Ganges may be purchased at Amazon.com.

Readers might be interested in the three-CD set Ganga: Music of the Ganges, which features folk music from Gurmukh to the Bay of Bengal, available now through Amazon.com.

NOTE: The Bahu of Bengal is an Amazon.com affiliate and receives a small commission for sales on Amazon.com via this blog.