Improved Daily Evapotranspiration Estimation Using Remotely Sensed Data in a Data Fusion System

Evapotranspiration (ET) represents crop water use and is a key indicator of crop health. Accurate estimation of ET is critical for agricultural irrigation and water resource management. ET retrieval using energy balance methods with remotely sensed thermal infrared data as the key input has been widely applied for irrigation scheduling, yield prediction, drought monitoring and so on. However, limitations on the spatial and temporal resolution of available thermal satellite data combined with the effects of cloud contamination constrain the amount of detail that a single satellite can provide. Fusing satellite data from different satellites with varying spatial and temporal resolutions can provide a more continuous estimation of daily ET at field scale. In this study, we applied an ET fusion modeling system, which uses a surface energy balance model to retrieve ET using both Landsat and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and then fuses the Landsat and MODIS ET retrieval timeseries using the Spatial-Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (STARFM). In this paper, we compared different STARFM ET fusion implementation strategies over various crop lands in the central California. In particular, the use of single versus two Landsat-MODIS pair images to constrain the fusion is explored in cases of rapidly changing crop conditions, as in frequently harvested alfalfa fields, as well as an improved dual-pair method. The daily 30 m ET retrievals are evaluated with flux tower observations and analyzed based on land cover type. This study demonstrates improvement using the new dual-pair STARFM method compared with the standard one-pair STARFM method in estimating daily field scale ET for all the major crop types in the study area.

Automated summary

Evapotranspiration is important for crop health and water resource management. Fusing satellite data from multiple satellites can provide more continuous estimation of daily ET at field scale. In this study, the ET fusion modeling system was applied to retrieve ET using Landsat and MODIS data, and the results showed improvement in estimating daily field scale ET for all major crop types in the study area compared to the standard method.