GIS and RS-Based Irrigation Performance Assessments of Sarkita Irrigation Scheme, near Burie Town, Amhara Region)

Irrigation performance assessment is paramount for comprehensively understanding irrigation schemes, their health, and their operation. This study will evaluate the Sarkita irrigation scheme using GIS and remote sensing tools alongside physical performance evaluation mechanisms. The SEBAL approach was used to calculate the actual evapotranspiration potential of the irrigation field. Additionally, the Penman-Monteith method was used to calculate the potential evapotranspiration of the irrigation project. Without a comprehensive performance assessment program, field officers rely on their experience and skills to control water distribution, which hardly leads to any performance improvements. ETact data from low-cost satellite data and canal flows from regular field measurements were used to carry out GIS operations and satellite remote sensing for estimating ETact through the SEBAL approach. This approach helped quantify related parameters of the selected performance indicators using image processing, GIS techniques, and performance evaluation data processing. The calculated crop water requirements using the SEBAL model and satellite data were not consistent with the applied water. The physical performance measure in this study indicated that the overall efficiency of the scale irrigation scheme was 35%. This result is relatively poor, falling below the 40-50% range. The findings from this study also showed that irrigation system performance indicator parameters were limited due to excessive water applied to the field. The study revealed an acceptable range of RET (0.8, 0.9); however, the irrigation system's reliability was poor according to field observations at each stage of the crop season. This was due to the field receiving an excessive amount of water. Generally, the Sarkita irrigation scheme operated in a lower range. Key words ; Sarkita, SABEL, Landsat, RET