India District-Level Rabi Irrigation Reconstruction Dataset, 1966–2022

This dataset provides a crop-level reconstruction of fixed-mm irrigation for India’s Rabi season. It translates district-level harvested crop area into a consistent monthly irrigation panel that can be compared across districts and over time. The dataset covers October to February for the selected Rabi crops (wheat, barley, rapeseed, and sorghum) and is designed to capture variation in irrigation through changes in crop composition and harvested area, while holding crop-specific seasonal water requirements and monthly allocation weights fixed. Each row represents one district–year–month–crop observation. Column descriptions: - district: district name - year: calendar year of the observation - month: calendar month number (10 = Oct, 11 = Nov, 12 = Dec, 1 = Jan, 2 = Feb) - crop: crop name - seasonal_area_ha: seasonal harvested area for that district–year–crop, in hectares. In this version, it is the maximum monthly harvested area observed across the Rabi months - district_area_ha: total district area, in hectares - irr_mm_assumed: assumed irrigation depth for that crop in that month, in millimeters over cropped area. This equals the crop’s seasonal irrigation requirement multiplied by the assigned monthly weight. - water_m3: total monthly irrigation water volume for that crop, in cubic meters - irr_mm_over_district: the same monthly crop-level water volume expressed as millimeters spread over the full district area In short, irr_mm_assumed describes irrigation over the crop’s own area, while irr_mm_over_district expresses that water as district-wide irrigation intensity. This crop-level table can then be aggregated to district-level monthly irrigation depth for mapping, regression analysis, and time-series comparisons.