Ashok N. Srivastava

Decadal variations in NDVI and food production in India

In this study we use long-term satellite, climate, and crop observations to document the spatial distribution of the recent stagnation in food grain production affecting the water-limited tropics (WLT), a region where 1.5 billion people live and depend on local agriculture that is constrained by chronic water shortages. Overall, our analysis shows that the recent stagnation in food production is corroborated by satellite data. The growth rate in annually integrated vegetation greenness, a measure of crop growth, has declined significantly (p < 0.10) in 23% of the WLT cropland area during the last decade, while statistically significant increases in the growth rates account for less than 2%. In