Study on Calculation of Land Surface Evapotranspiration Using Remote Sensing

Evapotranspiration (ET) plays a significant role in regional and global climates through its partitioning in hydrological cycles, and its estimation is thus of a great importance in assessing ground water and surface water resources, predicting crop yield and planning land use. For experimenting the possibility to assess the hydrological responses of ecological restoration in the Western Chinese Loess Plateau, a daily ET is comprehensively estimated by inputting NOAA/AVHRR data-derived parameters into surface energy balance system (SEBS) model. The observed data in the Western Chinese Loess Plateau are used to verify the estimates of input variables. ET estimation in this research shows that ET in the Western Chinese Loess Plateau is primarily determined by vegetation coverage, which is in turn determined by soil water availability. This study also demonstrates the remote sensing-aided surface energy balance model can be used to estimate ET in semiarid areas.