M. A. MohsineRamesh Kumar2024-07-082024-07-081999https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810211572Rice is the most important staple food in Indian dietary. Tribal people of Chotanagpur plateau too prefer rice over other food crops, hence, the rice is popularly and predominantly being grown in this region as a rainfed crop. Low productivity of rice crop, in this region is due to several land, soil and climatic constraints. One of the shortcomings in proper planning and execution of production programmes has been the delineation and characterization of the rice growing ecosystems and sub ecosystems in this region. Accurate delineation of rice ecosystems/ sub ecosystems so as to have an in depth knowledge of spatial distribution and temporal variations in climate, hydrology, land, soil, and limitations causing the low productivity of the land is an essential component of better planning and management of rice production in this region. Remote sensing and GIS based methodology has been found, now a days, to be the most advanced, accurate and reliable technology for delineation and characterization of rice ecosystems/sub ecosystems as this accounts for the temporal variability and spatial heterogeneity of the differentiating parameters and their interactions with crop management. Remotely sensed data coupled with ground truth provides the information on most of the biophysical parameters (land use, soil, drainage, slope etc.) which are required for rainfed rice environment classification. Keeping, in view, this need the present investigation was planned and carried out for the part of Ranchi District covered under Survey of India toposheet no. 73 E/7. Digital satellite data (IRS IB, LISS II), for summer and Kharif seasons, 1996 procured from NRSA, Hyderabad were processed at Regional Remote Sensing Service Centre, Nagpur using EAST PACE ver. 6.0.1 (image processing software package) and ARC/INFO ver. 7.1.1 (GIS package). Thematic maps (1:50,000 scale) on soils, land use/land cover, slope, drainage etc. were generated based on which the rice ecosystems and sub ecosystems were delineated. Auxiliary database on soil characteristics, climate, factors limiting low rice productivity and condition socio-economic etc. were used to characterize the delineated ecosystems and sub ecosystems and ground truthings were used to validate these delineations. The study area has been delineated into two main ecosystems i) Rainfed upland and ii) Rainfed lowland which have been further delineated into four distinct subecosystems, namely rainfed upland with short growing season (11400.7 ha) under rainfed upland ecosystem and shallow favorable/drought prone (19504.4 ha), shallow favourable (3716.8 ha), and shallow submergence prone (717.6 ha) under rainfed lowland ecosystem. Area other than rice crops (other crops, forest, waste lands, fallow lands etc.) has been grouped as not suitable for rice (29104.2 ha). Altogether 10 soil mapping units have been identified to exist in these sub ecosystems under 3 soil orders and 7 soil families.EnglishThesis