Assessing Daily Evapotranspiration Methodologies from One-Time-of-Day sUAS and EC Information in the GRAPEX Project.

Ayman Nassar,Alfonso Torres-Rua,William Kustas,Nick Dokoozlian,John Prueger,Calvin Coopmans,Maria Mar Alsina,William White,Joseph Alfieri,Lynn Mckee,Héctor Nieto,Lawrence Hipps,Luis Sanchez

doi:10.3390/rs13152887

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.

Highlights

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component in the hydro-ecological process, which couples water and energy budgets, links the land surface and the atmosphere [1], and represents water consumption for biomass production [2]
The analysis considered all months segregated into three vine stages/periods (April–May, June–August, and September–October) to investigate how vine phenology could affect the accuracy of estimated daily ET due to the timing of both water uptake and growth
Analysis was performed using flux observations collected at eight eddy covariance (EC) towers located at three vineyards in California’s Central Valley: Sierra Loma, Ripperdan, and Barrelli

Summary

Introduction

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component in the hydro-ecological process, which couples water and energy budgets, links the land surface and the atmosphere [1], and represents water consumption for biomass production [2]. Spatial techniques are needed to accurately quantify ET for improved irrigation scheduling and water management decision support, in complex canopies such as vineyards, which have non-uniform and complex vertical canopy structure, wide and variable row spacing, and deep and complex rooting systems [9]. This canopy structure produces large diurnal changes in solar radiation exposure to soil and plants [9] and requires sophisticated radiation extinction modeling [10,11]. The high evaporative demand with limited rainfall in the vineyard growing season (May–September), along with the need to achieve grapevine stress targets, constitutes a significant challenge for irrigation scheduling to ensure vineyard productivity [16]

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Results

Conclusion