Abstract
Efficient water management is essential for water and food security leading to socio-economic development. In order to build resilience and achieve water security, planning and management of water resources projects needs to be based on realistic assessment of related aspects. This requires comprehensive, reliable and easily accessible information on demand, availability and utilisation of water resources. Observational capabilities from ground monitoring systems and supplementary/complementary data from satellite remote sensing provide unique opportunities for data integration and value addition supporting water management decisions. While LANDSAT-1 initiated various remote sensing based activities with respect to management of hydrology and water resources across the globe, the launch of Indian remote sensing satellite, IRS-1A in 1988, along with its follow-up satellites, provided fillip to these activities mainly in India. The launch of IRS-1C in December 1995, with unique combination of sensors, has greatly improved extensive utilisation of satellite remote sensing for various facets of water management. This article presents a review of various applications carried out using IRS-1C data while highlighting the capabilities and advantage of IRS-1C sensors achieving significant improvement in mapping water bodies, inventory and monitoring of irrigated crops, irrigation system performance evaluation, assessment of reservoir sedimentation, mapping and monitoring of snow cover, snowmelt runoff forecasting, watershed developmental planning and management, etc.