Estimating surface evapotranspiration using combined MODIS and CBERS-02 data

Abstract

Spatial scale error is one of the most serious problems in the estimates of land surface heat fluxes of sensible and latent from satellite-borne data such as MODIS 1km resolution reflectance and emissive data. One of the feasible and economic ways to decrease the spatial scale error is to use high resolution land use class data together with the MODIS data. CBERS-02 data were used to produce land use class of Baiyangdian area, Hebei Province, China in the autumn of 2004. The area ratio of each class in MODIS pixel was calculated, and used to derive the heat fluxes of the mixed pixel. The results showed that the estimated heat fluxes of soil, sensible and latent have been changed remarkably after using the high resolution land class data. It could be concluded from the comparison between simulated and ground-measured fluxes as well as the theoretical analysis that high resolution land class data are useful to diminishing the scale error of heat fluxes estimated from low resolution satellite data.