Characterization of model errors is important when applying satellite-driven evapotranspiration (ET) models to water resource management problems. This study examines how uncertainty in ...meteorological forcing data and land surface modeling propagate through to errors in final ET data calculated using the Satellite Irrigation Management Support (SIMS) model, a computationally efficient ET model driven with satellite surface reflectance values. The model is applied to three instrumented winegrape vineyards over the 2017–2020 time period and the spatial and temporal variation in errors are analyzed. We illustrate how meteorological data inputs can introduce biases that vary in space and at seasonal timescales, but that can persist from year to year. We also observe that errors in SIMS estimates of land surface conductance can have a particularly strong dependence on time of year. Overall, meteorological inputs introduced RMSE of 0.33–0.65 mm/day (7–27%) across sites, while SIMS introduced RMSE of 0.55–0.83 mm/day (19–24%). The relative error contribution from meteorological inputs versus SIMS varied across sites; errors from SIMS were larger at one site, errors from meteorological inputs were larger at a second site, and the error contributions were of equal magnitude at the third site. The similar magnitude of error contributions is significant given that many satellite-driven ET models differ in their approaches to estimating land surface conductance, but often rely on similar or identical meteorological forcing data. The finding is particularly notable given that SIMS makes assumptions about the land surface (no soil evaporation or plant water stress) that do not always hold in practice. The results of this study show that improving SIMS by eliminating these assumptions would result in meteorological inputs dominating the error budget of the model on the whole. This finding underscores the need for further work on characterizing spatial uncertainty in the meteorological forcing of ET.
In order to validate its soil moisture products, the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission utilizes sites with permanent networks of in situ soil moisture sensors maintained by independent ...calibration and validation partners in a variety of ecosystems around the world. Measurements from each core validation site (CVS) are combined in a weighted average to produce an estimate of soil moisture at a 33-km scale that represents the SMAP's radiometer-based retrievals. Since upscaled estimates produced in this manner are dependent on the weighting scheme applied, an independent method of quantifying their biases is needed. Here, we present one such method that uses soil moisture measurements taken from a dense, but temporary, network of soil moisture sensors deployed at each CVS to train a random forests regression expressing soil moisture in terms of a set of spatial variables. The regression then serves as an independent source of upscaled estimates against which permanent network upscaled estimates can be compared in order to calculate bias statistics. This method, which offers a systematic and unified approach to estimate bias across a variety of validation sites, was applied to estimate biases at four CVSs. The results showed that the magnitude of the uncertainty in the permanent network upscaling bias can sometimes exceed 80% of the upper limit on SMAP's entire allowable unbiased root-mean-square error (ubRMSE). Such large CVS bias uncertainties could make it more difficult to assess biases in soil moisture estimates from SMAP.
NOAA AVHRR has been used extensively for monitoring vegetation condition and changes across the United States. Integration of crop growth models with MODIS imagery at 250 m resolution from the Terra ...Satellite potentially offers an opportunity for operational assessment of the crop condition and yield at both field and regional scales. The primary objective of this research was to evaluate the quality of the MODIS 250 m resolution data for retrieval of crop biophysical parameters that could be integrated in crop yield simulation models. A secondary objective was evaluating the potential use of MODIS 250 m resolution data for crop classification. A field study (24 fields) was conducted during the 2000 crop season in McLean County, Illinois, in the U.S. Midwest to evaluate the applicability of the MODIS 8-day, 250 m resolution composite imagery (version 4) for operational assessment of crop condition and yields. Ground-based canopy and leaf reflectance and leaf area index (LAI) measurements were used to calibrate a radiative transfer model to create a look up table (LUT) that was used to simulate LAI. The seasonal trend of MODIS derived LAI was used to find crop model parameters by adjusting the LAI simulated from the climate-based crop yield model. Other intermediate products such as crop phenological events were adjusted from the LAI seasonal profile. Corn (
Zea mays L.) and soybean (
Glycine max (L.) Merr.) yield simulations were conducted on a 1.6
×
1.6 km
2 spatial resolution grid and the results integrated to the county level. The results were within 10% of county yields reported by the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).
Seasonal freeze-thaw (FT) impacts much of the northern hemisphere and is an important control on its water, energy, and carbon cycle. Although FT in natural environments extends south of 45°N, FT ...studies using the L-band have so far been restricted to boreal or greater latitudes. This study addresses this gap by applying a seasonal threshold algorithm to Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) data (L3_SM_P) to obtain a FT product south of 45°N (‘SMAP FT’), which is then evaluated at SMAP core validation sites (CVS) located in the contiguous United States (CONUS). SMAP landscape FT retrievals are usually in good agreement with 0–5 cm soil temperature at SMAP grids containing CVS stations (>70%). The accuracy could be further improved by taking into account specific overpass time (PM), the grid-specific seasonal scaling factor, the data aggregation method, and the sampling error. Annual SMAP FT extent maps compared to modeled soil temperatures derived from the Goddard Earth Observing System Model Version 5 (GEOS-5) show that seasonal FT in CONUS extends to latitudes of about 35–40°N, and that FT varies substantially in space and by year. In general, spatial and temporal trends between SMAP and modeled FT were similar.
The unique vertical canopy structure and clumped plant distribution/row structure of vineyards and orchards creates an environment that is likely to cause the wind profile inside the canopy air space ...to deviate from how it is typically modelled for most crops. This in turn affects the efficiency of turbulent flux exchange and energy transport as well as their partitioning between the plant canopy and soil/substrate layers. The objective of this study was to evaluate a new wind profile formulation in the canopy air space that explicitly considers the unique vertical variation in plant biomass of vineyards. The validity of the new wind profile formulation was compared to a simpler wind attenuation profile that assumes attenuation through a homogeneous canopy. We evaluated both attenuation models using measurements of wind speed in a vineyard interrow, as well as turbulent flux estimates retrieved from a two-source energy balance model, which uses land surface temperature as the key boundary condition for flux estimation. This is relevant in developing a robust remote sensing-based energy balance modelling system for accurately monitoring vineyard water use or evapotranspiration that can be applied using satellite and airborne imagery for field-to-regional scale applications. These tools are needed in intensive agricultural production regions with arid climates such as the Central Valley of California, which experiences water shortages during extended drought periods requiring an effective water management policy based on robust water use estimates for allocating water resources. Results showed that the new wind profile model improved sensible heat flux estimates (RMSE reduction from 42 to 35
W
m
-
2
) when the vine canopy is in early growth stage resulting in a strongly clumped canopy.
Assessment of water consumption is a crucial task for irrigation management in grapevines, especially in areas with limited water resources, which is the case of California Central Valley. This study ...evaluated the utility of the Simple Algorithm for Evapotranspiration Retrievement (SAFER) model to estimate daily and seasonal actual evapotranspiration (ET
a
) using Sentinel 2 images at 10-m spatial resolution and 5-day revisit time in 3 vineyards located at two sites in California. A unique characteristic of this model is the estimation of “synthetic” temperature maps, which are used as part of the estimation of ET and energy balance. The SAFER energy balance results were validated with six eddy covariance (EC) flux towers as part of the Grape Remote-sensing Atmospheric Profile and Evapotranspiration eXperiment (GRAPEX). The estimated surface temperature derived from upwelling longwave radiation measurements was closely correlated with the observed sensor surface temperature with
R
2
higher than 0.86 for the analyzed EC towers. After performing an internal calibration, SAFER root mean square error (RMSE) values on daily ET
a
were between 0.64 and 0.75 mm day
−1
. Additionally, the seasonal ET
a
was estimated and compared with the EC observations showing an average
R
2
ranging from 0.64 to 0.52 mm/season. Spatial patterns of ET
a
showed variability between sites and producer management activities. The results found indicate both limitations and potential utility of SAFER for irrigation management in vineyards using daily or seasonal ET
a
under different irrigation treatments.
A soil moisture (SM) disaggregation algorithm based on thermal inertia (TI) theory was implemented to downscale the soil moisture active passive (SMAP) enhanced product (SPL2SMP\_E) from 9 to 1 km ...over the continental United States. The algorithm applies land surface temperature and normalized difference vegetation index from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) at higher spatial resolution to estimate relative soil wetness within a coarse SMAP grid-this MODIS-derived relative wetness is then used to produce the downscaled SMAP SM. Results from the algorithm were evaluated in terms of their spatio-temporal coverage and accuracy using in situ measurements from SMAP core validation sites (CVS), the U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Reference Network (CRN). Results were also compared with the baseline SPL2SMP\_E and the SMAP/Sentinel-1 (SPL2SMAP\_S) 1 km product. Overall, the unbiased root-mean-square error (ubRMSE) of the disaggregated SM at the CVS using the TI approach is approximately 0.04 \text{m}^3/\text{m}^3, which is the SMAP mission requirement for the baseline products. The TI approach outperforms the SMAP/Sentinel SL2SMAP\_S 1 km product by approximately 0.02 \text{m}^3/\text{m}^3. Over the agriculture/crop areas from SCAN and CRN sparse network stations, the TI approach exhibits better ubRMSE compared to SPL2SMP\_E and SPL2SMAP\_S by about 0.01 and 0.02 \text{m}^3/\text{m}^3, indicating its advantage in these areas. However, a drawback of this approach is that there are data gaps due to cloud cover as optical sensors cannot have a clear view of the land surface.
The Priestley-Taylor (PT) approximation for computing evapotranspiration was initially developed for conditions of a horizontally uniform saturated surface sufficiently extended to obviate any ...significant advection of energy. Nevertheless, the PT approach has been effectively implemented within the framework of a thermal-based two-source model (TSM) of the surface energy balance, yielding reasonable latent heat flux estimates over a range in vegetative cover and climate conditions. In the TSM, however, the PT approach is applied only to the canopy component of the latent heat flux, which may behave more conservatively than the bulk (soil + canopy) system. The objective of this research is to investigate the response of the canopy and bulk PT parameters to varying leaf area index (LAI) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) in both natural and agricultural vegetated systems, to better understand the utility and limitations of this approximation within the context of the TSM. Micrometeorological flux measurements collected at multiple sites under a wide range of atmospheric conditions were used to implement an optimization scheme, assessing the value of the PT parameter for best performance of the TSM. Overall, the findings suggest that within the context of the TSM, the optimal canopy PT coefficient for agricultural crops appears to have a fairly conservative value of approximately 1.2 except when under very high vapor pressure deficit (VPD) conditions, when its value increases. For natural vegetation (primarily grasslands), the optimal canopy PT coefficient assumed lower values on average (approximately 0.9) and dropped even further at high values of VPD. This analysis provides some insight as to why the PT approach, initially developed for regional estimates of potential evapotranspiration, can be used successfully in the TSM scheme to yield reliable heat flux estimates over a variety of land cover types.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The Advanced microwave scanning radiometer 2 (AMSR2) is part of the global change observationmission-water (GCOM-W). AMSR2 has filled the gap in passive microwave observations left by the loss of ...theAMSR-earth observing system (AMSR-E) after almost ten years of observations. Both missions provide brightness temperature observations that are used to retrieve soil moisture estimates at the near surface. A merged AMSR-E and AMSR2 data product will help build a consistent long-term dataset; however, before this can be done, it is necessary to conduct a thorough validation and assessment of the AMSR2 soil moisture products. This study focuses on the validation of the AMSR2 soil moisture products by comparison with in situ reference data from a set of core validation sites around the world. A total of three soil moisture products that rely on different algorithms were evaluated; the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) soil moisture algorithm, the land parameter retrieval model (LPRM), and the single channel algorithm (SCA). JAXA, SCA, and LPRM soil moisture estimates capture the overall climatological features. The spatial features of the three products have similar overall spatial structure. The JAXA soil moisture product shows a lower dynamic range in the retrieved soil moisture with a satisfactory performance matrix when compared to in situ observations unbiased root mean square error (ubRMSE) = 0.059 m 3 /m 3 , Bias = -0.083 m 3 /m 3 , R = 0.465. The SCA performs well over low and moderately vegetated areas (ubRMSE = 0.053 m 3 /m 3 , Bias = -0.039 m 3 /m 3 , R = 0.549). The LPRM product has a large dynamic range compared to in situ observations with a wet bias (ubRMSE = 0.094 m 3 /m 3 , Bias = 0.091 m 3 /m 3 , R = 0.577). Some of the error is due to the difference in observation depth between the in situ sensors (5 cm) and satellite estimates (1 cm). Results indicate that overall the JAXA and SCA have the best performance based upon the metrics considered.
Water-limiting conditions in many California vineyards necessitate assessment of vine water stress to aid irrigation management strategies and decisions. This study was designed to evaluate the ...utility of a Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI) using multiple canopy temperature sensors and to study the diurnal signature in the stress index of an irrigated vineyard. A detailed instrumentation package comprised of eddy covariance instrumentation, ancillary surface energy balance components, soil water content sensors and a unique multi-canopy temperature sensor array were deployed in a production vineyard near Lodi, CA. The instrument package was designed to measure and monitor hourly growing season turbulent fluxes of heat and water vapor, radiation, air temperature, soil water content directly beneath a vine canopy, and vine canopy temperatures. April 30–May 02, June 10–12 and July 27–28, 2016 were selected for analysis as these periods represented key vine growth and production phases. Considerable variation in computed CWSI was observed between each of the hourly average individual canopy temperature sensors throughout the study; however, the diurnal trends remained similar: highest CWSI values in morning and lowest in the late afternoon. While meteorological conditions were favorable for plant stress to develop, soil water content near field capacity due to frequent irrigation allowed high evapotranspiration rates resulting in downward trending CWSI values during peak evaporative demand. While the CWSI is typically used to evaluate plant stress under the conditions of our study, the trend of the CWSI suggested a lowering of plant water stress as long as there was adequate soil water available to meet atmospheric demand.