Remote sensing based estimation of evapotranspiration rates

Abstract

A remote sensing based method is presented for calculating evapotranspiration rates (λE) using standard meteorological field data and radiometric surface temperature recorded for bare soil, maize and wheat canopies in Denmark. The estimation of λE is achieved using three equations to solve three unknowns; the atmospheric resistance (r_ae ), the surface resistance (r_s ) and the vapour pressure at the surface (e_s ) where the latter is assessed using an empirical expression. The method is applicable, without modification, to dense vegetation and moist soil, but for a dry bare soil, where the effective source of water vapour is below the surface, the temperature of the evaporating front (T_s *) can not be represented by the measured surface temperature (T_s ). In this case (T_s -T_s *) is assessed as a linear function of the difference between surface temperature and air temperature. The calculated λE is comparable to latent heat fluxes recorded by the eddy covariance technique.

Acknowledgments

The paper was prepared within the projects EO-flux-budget and RS-model which is financed by the Danish research council, Copenhagen. Information on leaf area index and precipitation was kindly provided by Anton Thomsen and Tom Jensen from The Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Foulum, Denmark.