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A Geostatistical Approach to the Seasonal Precipitation Effect on Boro Rice Production in Bangladesh

Avit Kumar Bhowmik,
Instituto Superior de Estatística e Gestão de Informação, Universida de Nova de Lisboa Campus de Campolide, Lisboa, Portugal

Ana Cristina Costa
Instituto Superior de Estatística e Gestão de Informação, Universidade Nova de Lisboa Campus de Campolide, Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

Geographical assessments on the relationship between climate variability and crop production are important for planning adaptation programs to climate change impacts on Asian rice production. This paper analyses the seasonal precipitation consequences to irrigated crop yields, in opposition to the idea that irrigated crop yields are not affected by precipitation changes. Geostatistical methods were applied to assess changes in the patterns of seasonal precipitation and corresponding changes in the Boro crop production in Bangladesh. Surfaces depicting changes in the monsoon, non-monsoon and total precipitation from 2006 to 2007, and changes in three varieties of Boro crop yield and Total Boro yield from 2006-2007 to 2007-2008 crop years were generated through Splines, Inverse Distance Weighting and Ordinary Kriging methods. Performance evaluation of these models was also performed. The relationships between the surfaces of different precipitation seasons and the surfaces of different Boro yield seasons were then assessed. The results showed that there is a significant correlation between seasonal precipitation changes and Boro yield changes with notable correlation coefficients and similarity in the patterns. A significant conformity of the high precipitation zones to the high Boro yielding zones was also depicted.

Keywords: Climate; Crop Production; Interpolation; Kriging; Monsoon

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Program Area: Socio-economic and Policy

Non-commodity: Rainfall

Objectives:

The main objective of this study was to analyse the effect of seasonal precipitation change on irrigated Boro production in Bangladesh. First, deterministic and kriging methods have been evaluated and compared in order to find the best method to generate surfaces describing the precipitation and Boro production change phenomenon in Bangladesh.

Methodology:

Data: The daily precipitation data of the years 2006 and 2007 used in this study were provided by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department for 31 meteorological stations. Average and total precipitation, for monsoon (hydrological period) and dry season, have been computed from the daily precipitation dataset and have been used for surface interpolation. A quick overview of the data, which shows an increase in the monsoon precipitation from 2006 to 2007 in almost every station, particularly in Chittagong, Feni and Sitakunda. Total Boro production data for three varieties (Local, HYV and Hybrid) of the crop years 2006-2007 and 2007- 2008, collected from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), for 23 crop districts are used in the Boro production analysis. Average yield per hectare of Local, HYV, Hybrid and Total Boro rice have been calculated for these two crop years. There has been an increase in average yield from 2006-2007 to 2007-2008 in every region of Boro production, which provides evidence for some correlation with the increase of monsoon precipitation in this period. Daily precipitation has been measured at the meteorological stations and their geographical locations are known. However, the Boro production data has not been measured at any particular point location, rather it represents a region and thus this is inclusive and true for the whole area within a regional boundary. To overcome this shortcoming, the location of the meteorological station in a particular crop district has been considered as the point location of the Boro production in that district. The geographic centre of the district has been considered as the point location of the Boro production whenever the crop district had no station inside it. Total, monsoon and non-monsoon precipitation data was generated and used for spatial interpolating purposes. Similarly, Total, Local, HYV and Hybrid Boro yield data were generated and interpolated. Methodological Framework: Microsoft Excel® 2007 was used to pre-process the data for the geostatistical analysis, and ArcGIS® 9.31 and GeoMS© was used in the evaluation and application of the three widely used spatial interpolation techniques: Thin Plate Spline, Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) and Ordinary Kriging. Prediction errors statistics derived through cross-validation were used to evaluate and compare their performance, namely the mean error and the root mean square error. The best approach was then used in the final surface generation of precipitation and crop yield. Total precipitation data of 2006 and HYV Boro yield data of 2006-2007 crop year had been selected to perform the evaluation.

Source of Information: International Journal of Geosciences, 2012, 3, 443-462

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Achievement/Findings:

The effect of the seasonal variation of precipitation on irrigated and high yielded crop production had been further investigated through geo-band collection statistics, particularly the correlation between precipitation changes and changes in the Boro production. Results provide strong evidence that precipitation highly affects Boro yields. This research had contributed to the knowledge of the spatiotemporal patterns of improved crop varieties and their relationship with seasonal precipitation in Bangladesh. The study possesses some inherent limitations, though it had thoroughly analyzed the relationship between seasonal precipitation changes and irrigated Boro production. The sample size of thirty one meteorological stations and twenty three crop production districts were too small to accurately characterize an area of 147,570 km². This was the reason why, sometimes, the interpolated surfaces showed sudden pattern changes or bull’s eye effects. The assignment of point locations to the crop districts according to the location of the meteorological stations, and to the geographical center of the region, might also had adverse effects on the analysis. Nevertheless, this approach was considered the best because of the unavailability of data and allowed to serve the study purpose. Climate change has undoubtedly introduced erratic

Knowledge Management: Journal