A spatial reasoning approach to estimating paddy rice water demand in Hwanghaenam-do, North Korea

The primary objective of this study was to estimate the agricultural water demand of paddy fields in Hwanghaenam-do, North Korea. Three Landsat TM images, GIS data including digital elevation maps, a Thiessen network and administration maps of North Korea, and meteorological data were synthesized for this study. In order to estimate water demand for agricultural use, the FAO Blaney–Criddle method and 10-day crop coefficients of the northern areas of South Korea were used. To classify the Landsat images, supervised and unsupervised classification methods were conducted. Topographical constraints based on paddy rice growing conditions, which are under 7% slope and 200 m above sea level, were taken into account. The results showed an annual net water demand of 611.7 mm/year (916.4 Mt/year) is required for the 150,079 ha of paddy fields and the average gross water demand and design water demand for paddy rice were estimated to be 939.6 mm/year (1408 Mt/year) and 1131.97 mm/year (1695.1 Mt/year), respectively.