Estimation of hourly and daily evapotranspiration and soil moisture using downscaled LST over various urban surfaces

Surface moisture is important to link land surface temperature (LST) to people’s thermal comfort. In urban areas, the surface roughness from buildings and urban trees impacts wind speed, and consequently surface moisture. To find the role of surface roughness in surface moisture estimation, we developed methods to estimate daily and hourly evapotranspiration (ET) and soil moisture, based on a case study of Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. In order to capture the spatial and temporal variations of LST, hourly and daily LST was produced by downscaling techniques. Given the heterogeneity in urban areas, fractions of vegetation, soil, and impervious surfaces were calculated. To describe the urban morphology, surface roughness parameters were calculated from digital elevation model (DEM), digital surface model (DSM), and Terrestrial Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). Two source energy balance (TSEB) model was employed to generate ET, and the temperature vegetation index (TVX) method was used to calculate soil moisture. Stable hourly soil moisture fluctuated from 15% to 20%, and daily soil moisture increased due to precipitation and decreased due to seasonal temperature change. ET over soil, vegetation, and impervious surface in the urban areas yielded different patterns in response to precipitation. The surface roughness from high-rise has bigger influence on ET in central urban areas.     

Improving a Penman–Monteith evapotranspiration model by incorporating soil moisture control on soil evaporation in semiarid areas

Penman–Monteith (PM) theory has been successfully applied to calculate land surface evapotranspiration (ET) for regional and global scales. However, soil surface resistance, related to soil moisture, is always difficult to determine over a large region, especially in arid or semiarid areas. In this study, we developed an ET estimation algorithm by incorporating soil moisture control, a soil moisture index (SMI) derived from the surface temperature and vegetation index space. We denoted this ET algorithm as the PM-SMI. The PM-SMI algorithm was compared with several other algorithms that calculated soil evaporation using relative humidity, and validated with Bowen ratio measurements at seven sites in the Southern Great Plain (SGP) that were covered by grassland and cropland with low vegetation cover, as well as at three eddy covariance sites from AmeriFlux covered by forest with high vegetation cover. The results show that in comparison with the other methods examined, the PM-SMI algorithm significantly improved the daily ET estimates at SGP sites with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.91 mm/d, bias of 0.33 mm/d, and R² of 0.77. For three forest sites, the PM-SMI ET estimates are closer to the ET measurements during the non-growing season when compared with the other three algorithms. At all the 10 validation sites, the PM-SMI algorithm performed the best. PM-SMI 8-day ET estimates were also compared with MODIS 8-day ET products (MOD16A2), and the latter showed negligible bias at SGP sites. In contrast, most of the PM-SMI 8-day ET estimates are around the 1:1 line.     

An approach to estimate the evapotranspiration using NOAA/AVHRR DATA

Evapotranspiration (ET) is continued process wherein moisture from soil and vegetated surface is transferred to the atmosphere. Changes in evapotranspiration are likely to have large impacts on terrestrial vegetation. Evapotranspiration is a seasonally varying property at a given place; changes in it reflect the status of soil moisture and terrestrial vegetation. Through water balance, ET can include major shifts in vegetative patterns and or its condition leading to climate change. Therefore, in this paper, it is attempted to estimate the evapotranspiration over various land cover using National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/ Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data at coarse spatial resolution of 1.1 km. For this purpose, a semi-empirical model has been proposed to estimate the ET. Regression analysis has been carried out to develop an empirical relation between individual land cover surface temperature and ET, which will be helpful to know the effect of each land cover surface temperature on ET. In which, it is observed that surface temperature over grassland is more effective on ET in comparison to other land cover in March 1999 on the Mupfure, Zimbabwe catchment area. This type of estimation will be helpful for climate modeler, climatologists, ecosystem modeler and regional planner.     

数据驱动的蒸散发遥感反演方法及产品研究进展

蒸散发是水圈、大气圈和生物圈中水分循环和能量交换的纽带。在全球尺度上,蒸散发约占陆地降水总量的60%;作为其能量表达形式,潜热通量约占地表净辐射的80%。随着通量观测技术的发展,全球长期持续的观测数据得以获取和共享,近年来基于数据驱动的蒸散发遥感反演方法取得了较好的研究进展。本文针对数据驱动的蒸散发遥感反演方法和产品,从经验回归、机器学习和数据融合3个方面展开,对现有的研究进展进行了梳理、归纳和总结,并从驱动数据、反演方法、已有产品等方面指出目前仍存在的问题和不足。未来仍需开展数据驱动的高时空分辨率的蒸散发遥感反演方法的研究,有效考虑地表温度和土壤水分等可以指示地表蒸散发短期变化的重要信息,同时加强基于过程驱动的物理模型与数据驱动的模型的结合,使两类模型能互为补充、各自发挥所长,共同推动蒸散发遥感反演研究水平的进步。     

Diverse responses of vegetation production to interannual summer drought in North America

Droughts are projected to occur more frequently with future climate change of rising temperature and low precipitation. However, its impact on regional and global vegetation production is not well understood, which in turn contributes to uncertainties to model carbon sequestration under drought scenarios. Using long-term continuous eddy covariance measurements (168 site-year), we present an analysis of the influences of interannual summer drought on vegetation production across 29 sites representing diverse ecoregions and plant functional types in North America. Results showed that interannual summer drought, which was evaluated by the increase in summer temperature or decrease in soil moisture, would cause reductions of both summer gross primary production (GPP) and net ecosystem production (NEP) in non-forest sites (e.g., grasslands and crops). On the contrary, forest ecosystems presented a very different pattern. For evergreen forests, lower summer soil moisture decreased both GPP and NEP; however, higher summer temperature only reduced NEP with no apparent impacts on GPP. Furthermore, summer drought did not show evident impacts on either summer GPP or NEP in deciduous forests, suggesting a better potential of deciduous forests in resisting summer drought and accumulating carbon from atmosphere. These observations imply diverse responses of vegetation production to interannual summer drought and such features would be useful to improve the strengths and weaknesses of ecosystem models to better comprehend the impacts of summer drought with future climate change.     

Spectra and vegetation index variations in moss soil crust in different seasons,and in wet and dry conditions

Similar to vascular plants, non-vascular plant mosses have different periods of seasonal growth. There has been little research on the spectral variations of moss soil crust (MSC) over different growth periods. Few studies have paid attention to the difference in spectral characteristics between wet MSC that is photosynthesizing and dry MSC in suspended metabolism. The dissimilarity of MSC spectra in wet and dry conditions during different seasons needs further investigation. In this study, the spectral reflectance of wet MSC, dry MSC and the dominant vascular plant (Artemisia) were characterized in situ during the summer (July) and autumn (September). The variations in the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), biological soil crust index (BSCI) and CI (crust index) in different seasons and under different soil moisture conditions were also analyzed. It was found that (1) the spectral characteristics of both wet and dry MSCs varied seasonally; (2) the spectral features of wet MSC appear similar to those of the vascular plant, Artemisia, whether in summer or autumn; (3) both in summer and in autumn, much higher NDVI values were acquired for wet than for dry MSC (0.6 ∼ 0.7 vs. 0.3 ∼ 0.4 units), which may lead to misinterpretation of vegetation dynamics in the presence of MSC and with the variations in rainfall occurring in arid and semi-arid zones; and (4) the BSCI and CI values of wet MSC were close to that of Artemisia in both summer and autumn, indicating that BSCI and CI could barely differentiate between the wet MSC and Artemisia.     

Basin scale rainfall-evapotranspiration dynamics in a tropical semiarid environment during dry and wet years

In semiarid regions the occurrence of alternating long drought and heavy rainfall periods directly impacts water availability, affecting human water supply, agriculture development and the provision of ecosystem services. Because of that, research on the water input and output fluxes at the basin scale is of paramount importance. In this sense, rainfall-evapotranspiration (ET) dynamics play a critical role in water, soil and vegetation interactions, in hydrometeorological modelling and in the energy fluxes dynamics of semiarid regions. Therefore, the objective of this study was to quantify daily ET during a wet year and a dry year in a watershed located in the Brazilian Semiarid, by using remote sensing data and formulations based on the Simplified Surface Energy Balance Index (S-SEBI) and the Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEB) algorithms. Land surface temperature, albedo and NDVI data from MODIS sensor and solar radiation data from weather stations located in the basin were used. Rainfall analysis indicated 2009 and 2012 as being representatives of anomalously wet and dry years respectively, which were selected for the quantification of ET. The proposed algorithm was adjusted and verified with data from a flux tower equipped with eddy covariance system. Daily remote sensing ET estimates showed good agreement with observed values (RMSE = 0.79 mm.d⁻¹) and the annual ET relative error was of 7.7% (35.4 mm.year⁻¹). Results showed that the native vegetation can delay its dormant state for five months during wet years. During the wet year, ET differences between land cover classes were less noticeable due to soil saturation and the urgency of vegetated surfaces to meet their physiological needs. In dry year, however, differences were more evident, with bare soil presenting lower ET rates and vegetation classes showing higher ET values.     

新疆焉耆盆地土壤湿度时空分布特征

本文以新疆焉耆盆地为研究区,首先利用实测数据和Landsat 8 OLI遥感数据获取土壤调查植被指数（MSAVI）和地表温度（Ts）,构建Ts-MSAVI特征空间,拟合特征空间的干湿方程;然后利用该特征空间计算温度植被干旱指数（TVDIm）,反演9-11月的土壤湿度,探讨土壤湿度时空分布特征。试验结果表明：①遥感影像反演的TVDI与实地考察的土壤湿度显著相关（a=0.05）;不同土层中,TVDIm与10~20 cm土层湿度相关性最高（R=0.588）;②焉耆盆地湿度总体以半干旱为主（0.60.8）;土壤湿度空间分布上,焉耆盆地南侧为干旱区,西部和北部地区偏干旱,中部为湿润区域,对于该地区滨湖湿地和博斯腾湖附近小湖土壤湿度最高,博斯腾湖南部的沙地区土壤湿度最低,Ts与土壤湿度呈负相关;③10月湿地的TVDIm值最低,9月沙地的TVDIm值最高。TVDI模型应用于焉耆盆地取得较好的结果,可用于正确地估算土壤湿度,研究结果可为焉耆盆地生态环境和水资源提供重要的参数。     

Assessment of the EUMETSAT LSA-SAF evapotranspiration product for drought monitoring in Europe

Evapotranspiration is a key parameter for water stress assessment as it is directly related to the moisture status of the soil-vegetation system and describes the moisture transfer from the surface to the atmosphere. With the launch of the Meteosat Second Generation geostationary satellites and the setup of the Satellite Application Facilities, it became possible to operationally produce evapotranspiration data with high spatial and temporal evolution over the entire continents of Europe and Africa. In the frame of this study we present an evaluation of the potential of the evapotranspiration (ET) product from the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA-SAF) for drought assessment and monitoring in Europe.To assess the potential of this product, the LSA-SAF ET was used as input for the ratio of ET to reference evapotranspiration (ET₀), the latter estimated from the ECMWF interim reanalysis. In the analysis two case studies were considered corresponding to the drought episodes of spring/summer 2007 and 2011. For these case studies, the ratio ET/ET₀ was compared with meteorological drought indices (SPI, SPEI and Sc-PDSI for 2007 and SPI for 2011) as well as with the anomalies of the fraction of absorbed photosynthetic active radiation (fAPAR) derived from remote sensing data. The meteorological and remote sensing indicators were taken from the European Drought Observatory (EDO) and the CARPATCLIM climatological atlas.Results show the potential of ET/ET₀ to characterize soil moisture variability, and to give additional information to fAPAR and to precipitation distribution for drought assessment. The main limitations of the proposed ratio for drought characterization are discussed, including options to overcome them. These options include the use of filters to discriminate areas with a low percentage vegetation cover or areas that are not in their growing period and the use of evapotranspiration without water restriction (ET_wwr), obtained as output of the LSA-SAF model instead of ET₀. The ET/ET_wwr ratio was tested by comparing its accumulated values per growing period with the winter wheat yield values per country published by Eurostat. The results point to the potential of using the remote sensing based LSA-SAF evapotranspiration and the ET/ET_wwr ratio for vegetation monitoring at large scale, especially in areas where data is generally lacking.     

Relationship between oriental migratory locust plague and soil moisture extracted from MODIS data

Locust plagues have been the source of some of the most severe natural disasters in human history. Soil moisture content is among the most important of the numerous factors influencing plague onset and severity. This paper describes a study initiated in three pilot locust plague monitoring regions, i.e., Huangzao, Yangguanzhuang, and Tengnan in Huanghua county, Hebei province, China, to examine the impact of soil moisture status on oriental migratory locust [Locusta migratoria manilensis (L.) Meyen] plague breakout as related to the life cycle, oviposition in autumn, survival in winter, and incubation in summer. Thirty-nine temperature vegetation dryness index (TVDI) data sets, which represent soil moisture content, were extracted from MODIS remote sensing images for two representative time periods: a severe locust plague breakout year (2001–2002) and a slight plague year (2003–2004). TVDI values demonstrated distinctive soil moisture status differences between the 2 years concerned. Soil moisture conditions in the severe plague year were shown to be lower than those in slight plague year. In all three pilot regions, average TVDI value in the severe plague year was 0.07 higher than that in slight plague year, and monthly TVDI values in locust oviposition period (September and October) and incubation period (March, April and May) were higher than their corresponding monthly figures in slight plague year. No remarkable TVDI differences were found in other months during the locust life cycle between the 2 years. TVDI values for September and October (2001), March, April and May (2002) were 0.11, 0.08, 0.16, 0.11 and 0.16 higher than their corresponding monthly figures in 2003–2004 period, respectively.     

Satellite detection of increases in global land surface evapotranspiration during 1984–2007

Abstract

As a key component of digital earth, remotely sensed data provides the compelling evidence that the amount of water vapour transferred from the entire global surface to the atmosphere increased from 1984 to 2007. The validation results from the earlier evapotranspiration (ET) estimation algorithm based on net radiation (R _n ), Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), air temperature and diurnal air temperature range (DTaR) showed good agreement between estimated monthly ET and ground-measured ET from 20 flux towers. Our analysis indicates that the estimated actual ET has increased on average over the entire global land surface except for Antarctica during 1984–2007. However, this increasing trend disappears after 2000 and the reason may be that the decline in net radiation and NDVI during this period depleted surface soil moisture. Moreover, the good correspondence between the precipitation trend and the change in ET in arid and semi-arid regions indicated that surface moisture linked to precipitation affects ET. The input parameters R _n , T _air, NDVI and DTaR show substantial spatio-temporal variability that is almost consistent with that of actual ET from 1984 to 2007 and contribute most significantly to the variation in actual ET.     

Remotely sensed canopy temperature based evapotranspiration models for wheat

Field studies were conducted on differentially irrigated wheat (Cv. ‘Sonalika’), on a sandy loam soil at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi to evaluate the surface energy balance evapotranspiration (ET) models which use remotely sensed canopy temperature as an input. Four energy balance ET models were used in this study viz. Jackson et. al. (1977) approach; Bartholic et. al. (1970) and stability corrected and uncorrected aerodynamic resistance forms of models. To test the model, ET was estimated using remotely sensed canopy temperatrue, with the remaining to ET measured by water depletion method. Aerodynamic resistance forms of ET models performed well as compared to other models. Results indicate that remotely sensed canopy temperature as an input to surface energy balance models, offers a potential method of estimating ET from a cropped surface.     

Effects of water and heat on growth of winter wheat in the North China Plain

The North China Plain (NCP) was selected as the study area and the effects of water and heat were analysed to determine the dominant factor affecting winter wheat growth. The mean, minimum and maximum temperatures, precipitation and soil moisture data were selected to analyse the correlations between the leaf area index (the growth indicator) and these factors using long time series half-monthly data (2–5 months) (from 1982 to 2010). The results showed that temperature was the main factor affecting the growth of winter wheat in the NCP. The growth of winter wheat had weak correlations with precipitation and soil moisture and the influence of water on winter wheat growth was smaller than the influence of heat. In the northern part of the NCP, mainly including the north-west region of Shandong Province and the southern region of Hebei Province, irrigation was necessary in late February and early March.     

Soil Moisture Estimation in a Vegetated Area Using Combination of AIRSAR and Landsat5-TM Images

High difference between dielectric constant of water (dielectric constant about 80) and dielectric constant of dried soil (dielectric constant about 2–3) makes Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) highly capable in soil moisture estimation. However, there are other factors which affect on radar backscattering coefficient. The most important parameters are vegetation cover, surface roughness and sensor parameters (frequency, polarization and incidence angle). In this paper, the importance of considering the effects of these parameters on SAR backscatter coefficients is shown by comparing different soil moisture estimation models. Moreover, an experimental soil moisture estimation model is developed. It is shown that this model can be used to estimate soil moisture under a variety of vegetation cover densities. The new developed model is based on combination of different indices derived from Landsat5-Thematic Mapper and AIRSAR images. The AIRSAR image is used for extraction of backscattering coefficient and incidence angle while TM image is used for calculation of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Brightness Temperature. Then a soil moisture estimation model which is named as Hybrid model is developed based on integration of all of these parameters. The accuracies of this model are assessed in the NDVI ranges of 0–0.2, 0.2–0.4 and 0.4–0.7 by using SAR data in C band and L band frequencies and also in different polarizations of HH, HV, VV and TP. The results show that for instance in L band with HV polarization, R-square values of 0.728, 0.628 and 0.527 are obtained between ground measured soil moisture and estimated soil moisture values using the Hybrid model for NDVI ranges of 0–0.2, 0.2–0.4 and 0.4–0.7, respectively.     

An Assessment of QuikSCAT Ku-Band Scatterometer Data for Soil Moisture Sensitivity

The QuikSCAT enhanced (2.225-km) backscattering product is investigated for sensitivity to changes in soil moisture and its potential for spatial disaggregation of Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) soil moisture. Specifically, an active–passive methodology based on temporal change detection is tested using data from the 2006 National Airborne Field Experiment data set. This campaign was carried out from October 29 to November 20, 2006 in a 60 km $times$ 40 km area of the Murrumbidgee catchment, southeast Australia. Temporal change detection analysis and accuracy in terms of spatial pattern distribution throughout the domain were assessed using a passive microwave airborne product derived from the Polarimetric L-band Multibeam Radiometer at 1-km spatial resolution. QuikSCAT–AMSR-E intercomparisons indicated higher correlations when using C-band observations. The greatest sensitivity to soil moisture was observed when using V-polarized backscatter measurement. While backscattering data showed adequate temporal sensitivity to changes in soil moisture due to precipitation events, the spatial agreement was complicated by the presence of irrigation and standing water (rice fields). This resulted in low Cramer's Phi values (less than 0.06), which were used as a measure of spatial correspondence in terms of change in soil moisture and backscatter. In addition, the high QuikSCAT sensor frequency and existence of noise in the observed data contributed to the observed discrepancies.      

Case study of soil moisture effect on land surface temperature retrieval

Land surface temperature (LST) is an important element of the climate system. Remote sensing methods for estimating LST have been developed in the past and several of them have been implemented at large-scales. Geostationary satellites are of particular interest because they depict the diurnal cycle. Soil moisture has a strong effect on the magnitude of surface temperature via its influence on emissivity; yet, information on soil moisture at large scales is meager. It is of interest to estimate what effect soil moisture has on the retrieval accuracy of surface temperature by methods of remote sensing. In this study, newly developed algorithms to estimate land surface temperature (LST) from geostationary satellites will be applied to GOES-8 observations during the Southern Great Plains 1997 Hydrology Experiment (SGP-97) when surface observations of both soil moisture and surface temperature were made. The ground observations were used to first demonstrate the influence of soil moisture on the diurnal cycle of the surface temperature, its amplitude and the lag in LST maxima. Subsequently, it was established that errors in LST as derived from GOES-8 measurements have a negative correlation with soil moisture, namely, increasing with the decrease of soil moisture.     

MPDI在微波辐射计植被覆盖区土壤水分反演中的应用

大尺度上的土壤水分变化监测对于建立全球的水循环模型意义重大，是实现气候变化预测和洪涝监测的基础。星载辐射计为实现大尺度上土壤水分的监测提供了监测途径。但是在星载辐射计观测时，地表植被层的吸收和散射作用会对土壤向上的微波辐射产生衰减影响，这种影响在反演土壤水分的过程中必须予以计算和消除。原有的反演算法中，在计算这部分影响的时候，需要大量的关于地表植被状况的辅助数据，而这些即时的辅助数据往往不易获得。以AMSR—E数据为例，研究证明了微波极化差异指数（MPDI）能够反映地表植被覆盖状况。以中国华北、华东地区为实验区，选择2004年4月8日的AMSR—E亮温数据和MODIS数据为样本数据，建立起MPDI与NDVI之间的负指数关系方程。基于对NDVI的认识，得到植被覆盖度高、中、低三种状况所对应的MPDI域值，以此域值为依据对中等植被覆盖度地区作出自动判断，并用MPDI计算植被层不透明度。     

GF-1垂直干旱指数的土壤湿度空间格局分析——以秭归县为例

针对中低分辨率的遥感图像在表征空间异质性较大地区的土壤湿度空间格局存在较大误差问题,该文探讨了基于高分辨率影像在小尺度上分析土壤湿度空间分布及变异规律的可行性。首先利用高分一号WFV数据构建垂直干旱指数来反映秭归县土壤湿度干湿状况,然后进一步分析了该县土壤湿度在水平及垂直方向上的空间格局和分异规律。实验结果表明,野外同步土壤表层水含量测试数据同垂直干旱指数两者表现出较好的相关程度。     

Remote Sensing of Soil Moisture Using Airborne Hyperspectral Data

Landscape assessment of soil moisture is critical to understanding the hydrological cycle at the regional scale and in broad-scale studies of biophysical processes affected by global climate changes in temperature and precipitation. Traditional efforts to measure soil moisture have been principally restricted to in situ measurements, so remote sensing techniques are often employed. Hyperspectral sensors with finer spatial resolution and narrow band widths may offer an alternative to traditional multispectral analysis of soil moisture, particularly in landscapes with high spatial heterogeneity. This preliminary research evaluates the ability of remotely sensed hyperspectral data to quantify soil moisture for the Little River Experimental Watershed (LREW), Georgia. An airborne hyperspectral instrument with a short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) sensor was flown in 2005 and 2007 and the results were correlated to in situ soil moisture values. A significant statistical correlation (R ² value above 0.7 for both sampling dates) for the hyperspectral instrument data and the soil moisture probe data at 5.08 cm (2 inches) was determined. While models for the 20.32 cm (8 inches) and 30.48 cm (12 inches) depths were tested, they were not able to estimate soil moisture to the same degree.