Estimating Regional Evapotranspiration Using Remote Sensing: Application to Sone Low Level Canal System, India

Abstract

Remote sensing-derived spectral data have been used in the past to partition net radiation, soil heat, and sensible heat fluxes for estimating latent heat flux as a residual of surface energy balance, and thus regional evapotranspiration. Attempts to provide a simplified procedure for estimating sensible heat flux at a regional scale have not been successful because of the relatively strong dependence of the heat transfer coefficient on the land–atmosphere boundary condition. This paper presents a remote sensing-based procedure to estimate the sensible heat flux incorporating the local meteorological conditions, and in turn to determine the regional evapotranspiration. The model utilizes satellite-derived surface albedo, surface temperature, and leaf area index along with a very few agrometeorological data as inputs. The proposed procedure has been tested on a part of the Western Yamuna Canal system, India, and is found to be computationally simple as well as stable. For a well-watered wheat crop, the average evapotranspiration by the proposed model is estimated to be