| Sumario: | Sri Lanka’s rice sector plays a vital role in national food security, yet traditional field-based monitoring methods remain labor-intensive and time-consuming. With recurring climate extremes and increasing pressure on agriculture, the use of satellite-based Earth Observation (EO) technologies has become essential for timely and accurate mapping of paddy cultivated areas to forecast the yield. To strengthen the national technical capacity, a training workshop was conducted focusing on the use of open-source geospatial tools and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data, particularly Sentinel-1, for high-resolution paddy mapping. The workshop introduced participants to the full workflow of satellite-based rice monitoring, from data preprocessing and time-series analysis to classification, accuracy assessment, and validation. Led by experts from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the sessions included theoretical presentations, hands-on exercises, and live demonstrations using platforms such as Google Earth Engine (GEE), QGIS, Python, and Google Colab. Participants gained practical skills in using SAR-based indices, recognizing crop growth stages, and generating reliable paddy extent maps. Discussions highlighted a strong interest in applying these tools to irrigation schemes managed by the Mahaweli Authority, with recommendations for further field-based training and data integration. The workshop successfully strengthened national capacity and advanced the use of EO technologies for sustainable agricultural planning in Sri Lanka.
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