Journal of Agricultural Chemistry and Environment, 2014, 3, 57-65 Published Online April 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/jacen http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jacen.2014.32B010 How to cite this paper: El-Shirbeny, M.A., Ali, A.-E.M. and Saleh, N.H. (2014) Crop Water Requirements in Egypt Using Re- mote Sensing Techniques. Journal of Agricultural Chemistry and Environment, 3, 57-65. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jacen.2014.32B010 Crop Water Requirements in Egypt Using Remote Sensing Techniques Mohammed A. El-Shirbeny 1* , Abd-Elraouf M. Ali 1 , Nasser H. Saleh 1 National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (Egypt) 23 Joseph Tito St., El-Nozha El-Gedida, Cairo, Egypt Email: * mshirbeny@yahoo.com Received December 2013 Abstract The common Soil in Egypt is clay soil so common irrigation system is tradition surface irrigation with 60% irrigation efficiency. Agricultural sector consumes more than 80% of water resources under surface irrigation (tradition methods). In arid and semi-arid regions consumptive use is the best index for irrigation requirements. A large part of the irrigation water applied to farm land is consumed by Evapotranspiration (ET). Irrigation water consumption under each of the physical and climatic conditions for large scale will be easier with remote sensing techniques. In Egypt, Agricultural cycle is often tow agricultural seasons yearly; summer and winter. Common summer crops are Maize, Rice and Cotton while common winter crops are Clover and Wheat. Landsat8 bands 4 and 5 provide Red (R) and Near Infra-Red (NIR) measurements and it used to calculate Normalized Deference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and monitoring cultivated areas. The cultivated land area was 3,277,311 ha in August 2013. In this paper Kc = 2 * NDVI − 0.2 represents the rela- tion between crop coefficient (Kc) and NDVI. Kc and Reference evapotranspiration (ETo) used to estimate ETc in Egypt. The main objective of this paper is studying the potential crop Evapotrans- piration in Egypt using remote sensing techniques. Keywords Normalized Deference Vegetation Index (NDVI); Reference Evapotranspiration (ETo); Landsat8; Crop Coefficient (Kc); Crop Evapotranspiration (ETc) and Arid Region 1. Introduction Limited water resources and scarcity of water in Egypt is the main challenge for agricultural horizontal expand- ing policies and strategies. At the same time over population is rapidly increasing and agricultural land decreased. As a result, quantities and qualities of food decrease. To solve this problem adopted policies of horizontal and vertical expanding in agricultural lands and activities had been considered based saving irrigation water to cul- tivate another area. Crop water requirements must be estimated accurately, improving irrigation efficiencies and applying high efficiency irrigation method as localized irrigation (drip irrigation efficiency 85% - 95%), using scheduling irrigation, cultivate tolerated crops to drought, and cultivate short period verities. Information about * Corresponding author.