Riparian Plant Evapotranspiration and Consumptive Use for Selected Areas of the Little Colorado River Watershed on the Navajo Nation

Estimates of riparian vegetation water use are important for hydromorphological assessment, partitioning within human and natural environments, informing environmental policy decisions. The objectives this study were to calculate the actual evapotranspiration (ETa) (mm/day mm/year) derive annual consumptive (CU) in acre-feet (AF) select areas Little Colorado River watershed Navajo Nation, northeastern Arizona, USA. This was accomplished by first estimating land cover area trees shrubs using a 2019 summer scene from National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) (1 m resolution), then fusing delineation with Landsat-8 OLI (30-m) estimate ETa 2014–2020. We used indirect remote sensing methods based on gridded weather data, Daymet km) PRISM (4 km), Landsat measurements activity two-band Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI2). potential ET calculated Blaney-Criddle. Riparian quantified Nagler ET(EVI2) approach. Using both vector raster estimates tree, shrub, total area, we produced CU region. Our best is 36,983 AF range between 31,648–41,585 refines earlier projections 25,387–46,397 AF.