Title
Assessing daily evapotranspiration methodologies from one‐time‐of‐day suas and ec information in the grapex project
Date Issued
01 August 2021
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Nassar A.
Kustas W.
Alfieri J.
Hipps L.
Prueger J.
Nieto H.
Alsina M.M.
White W.
McKee L.
Coopmans C.
Sanchez L.
Dokoozlian N.
Utah State University
Publisher(s)
MDPI AG
Abstract
Daily evapotranspiration (ETd) plays a key role in irrigation water management and is particularly important in drought‐stricken areas, such as California and high‐value crops. Remote sensing allows for the cost‐effective estimation of spatial evapotranspiration (ET), and the advent of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) technology has made it possible to estimate instantaneous high‐resolution ET at the plant, row, and subfield scales. sUAS estimates ET using “instantaneous” remote sensing measurements with half‐hourly/hourly forcing micrometeorological data, yielding hourly fluxes in W/m2 that are then translated to a daily scale (mm/day) under two assumptions: (a) relative rates, such as the ratios of ET‐to‐net radiation (Rn) or ET‐to‐solar radiation (Rs), are assumed to be constant rather than absolute, and (b) nighttime evaporation (E) and transpiration (T) contributions are negligible. While assumption (a) may be reasonable for unstressed, full cover crops (no exposed soil), the E and T rates may significantly vary over the course of the day for partially vegetated cover conditions due to diurnal variations of soil and crop temperatures and interactions between soil and vegetation elements in agricultural environments, such as vineyards and orchards. In this study, five existing extrapolation approaches that compute the daily ET from the “instantaneous” remotely sensed sUAS ET estimates and the eddy covariance (EC) flux tower measurements were evaluated under different weather, grapevine variety, and trellis designs. Per assumption (b), the nighttime ET contribution was ignored. Each extrapolation technique (evaporative fraction (EF), solar radiation (Rs), net radiation‐to‐solar radiation (Rn/Rs) ratio, Gaussian (GA), and Sine) makes use of clear skies and quasi‐sinusoidal diurnal variations of hourly ET and other meteorological parameters. The sUAS ET estimates and EC ET measurements were collected over multiple years and times from different vineyard sites in California as part of the USDA Agricultural Research Service Grape Remote Sensing Atmospheric Profile and Evapotranspiration eXperiment (GRAPEX). Optical and thermal sUAS imagery data at 10 cm and 60 cm, respectively, were collected by the Utah State University AggieAir sUAS Program and used in the Two‐Source Energy Balance (TSEB) model to estimate the instantaneous or hourly sUAS ET at overpass time. The hourly ET from the EC measurements was also used to validate the extrapolation techniques. Overall, the analysis using EC measurements indicates that the Rs, EF, and GA approaches presented the best goodness‐of‐fit statistics for a window of time between 1030 and 1330 PST (Pacific Standard Time), with the Rs approach yielding better agreement with the EC measurements. Similar results were found using TSEB and sUAS data. The 1030–1330 time window also provided the greatest agreement between the actual daily EC ET and the extrapolated TSEB daily ET, with the Rs approach again yielding better agreement with the ground measurements. The expected accuracy of the upscaled TSEB daily ET estimates across all vineyard sites in California is below 0.5 mm/day, (EC extrapolation accuracy was found to be 0.34 mm/day), making the daily scale results from TSEB reliable and suitable for day‐to‐day water management applications.
Volume
13
Issue
15
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Geociencias, Multidisciplinar Otras ingenierías y tecnologías Otras ciencias agrícolas
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85111554618
Source
Remote Sensing
ISSN of the container
20724292
Sponsor(s)
Acknowledgments: We would like to thank the Aggieair Service Center team (Ian Gowing, Mark Winkelaar, and Shannon Syrstad) for their extraordinary support in this research, whose coopera‐ tion greatly improved the data collection and data processing, and the staff of Viticulture, Chemistry and Enology Division of E&J Gallo Winery for the assistance in the collection and processing of field data during GRAPEX IOPs. This project was partially financially supported by the NASA Applied Sciences Water Resources Program under Award no. 200906 NNX17AF51G, and by the Utah Water Research Laboratory at Utah State University. The authors would like to thank Carri Richards for editing this pape Funding: Funding provided by E&J Gallo Winery. Utah Water Research Laboratory contributed towards the acquisition and processing of the ground truth and sUAS imagery data collected during GRAPEX IOPs. We would like to acknowledge the financial support for this research from the NASA Applied Sciences Water Resources Program [NNX17AF51G] as well as the USDA Non‐As‐ sistance Cooperative Agreement 58‐8042‐5‐092 funding. The USDA is an equal opportunity pro‐ vider and employer.
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