Current World Environment

A study was conducted to quantify agro-climatic and agro-ecological zones in north-west India using 34 years (1980-1914) weather data of twenty two agro-meteorological stations of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The weather data and the coordinates were converted into decimal system for each meteorological station, for spatial analysis. The map of north-west India was digitized and thermal, humidity, rainfall and moisture index and Length of growing period layers were prepared in the GIS environment using Arc GIS 10.1. These layers were combined by union operation and polygons were grouped into different zones. The moisture index and length of growing period zones were integrated with other spatial input layers of soil texture on logical manner to demarcate different agro-climatic and agro-ecological zones and sub zones. Based on texture the soils of study area were broadly characterized in five classes. North-west India was divided into ten agro-climatic zones as Z-1 to Z-10 and thirty six sub agro-ecological zones which represent homogeneity with respect to climate, growing periods and soil texture, which covers all features of abiotic crop environment. These zones helped to adjust cropping season according to moisture, temperature, vegetations and their combination regime. A shift in climatic belt was observed towards south-west as moist sub humid zone in Haryana which did not exist in old climatic map of Haryana. Itwas a new zone noticed in this state. The south-western limit of dry sub humid zone shifted about 40 km and of semi-arid zone shifted to about 60 km. The study will be very useful in the planning of farming system as well as cropping systems and may fill the gaps in ecological zonation of the area.