Estimation of Mediterranean crops evapotranspiration by means of remote-sensing based models

Estimation of Mediterranean crops evapotranspiration by means of remote-sensing based models M. Minacapilli, C. Agnese, F. Blanda, C. Cammalleri, G. Ciraolo, G. D’Urso, M. Iovino, D. Pumo, G. Provenzano, and G. Rallo Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Tecnologie Agro-Forestali (ITAF), Università di Palermo, Italy Dept. of Hydraulic Engineering and Environmental Applications, Università di Palermo, Italy Dept. Agricultural Engineering and Agronomy, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy Received: 24 October 2008 – Accepted: 5 November 2008 – Published: 5 January 2009 Correspondence to: M. Minacapilli (minacap@idra.unipa.it) Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.


Introduction
The estimation of temporal and spatial distribution of actual evapotranspiration (ET) is an essential step for mapping crop water requirements and for water management purposes, especially in Mediterranean areas where water scarcity and semiarid climate cause often fragility and severe damage in the agro-ecosystems.The determination of ET in water-limited conditions is not an easy task, due to the heterogeneity and complexity of involved hydrological and biophysical processes.During recent years, several procedures and models have been developed to simulate mass and energy exchange in the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere (SPA) system (Feddes et al., 1978;Bastiaanssen et al., 2007).In particular, deterministic models have been proposed for detailed simulation of all the components of the water balance, including crop growth, irrigation and solute transport (Vanclooster et al., 1994;van Dam et al., 1997;Droogers et al., 2000;Ragab, 2002).These models have been developed for site-specific applications but they have seldom been applied to large areas, due to the complexity in the acquisition of input data, often characterised by spatial and temporal variability.To overcome this problem, techniques have been suggested which involve the use of GIS (Liu et al., 2007a, b;Liu, 2009) and Remote Sensing techniques to gather quantitative information on the temporal and spatial distribution of various vegetation parameters, i.e. albedo, crop coefficient, leaf area index (Choudhury et al., 1994;D'Urso et al., 1999;Schultz and Engman, 2000).These studies are based on the fact that crop canopy reflects solar radiation, which can be measured with a radiometer at various wavelength in the visible and near-infrared (VIS/NIR) spectral range.The feasibility of using remotely sensed crop parameters in combination of Agro-Hydrological models has been investigated in several studies (D'Urso, 2001; D'Urso and Minacapilli, 2006;Immerzeel et al., 2008;Crown et al., 2008;Minacapilli et al., 2008) with the aim of enabling the spatially distributed evaluation of water balance components in the SPA system.
A further contribution offered by Remote Sensing techniques has been the development of operational methods for the direct estimation of actual evapotranspiration Introduction

Conclusions References
Tables Figures

Back Close
Full based on the Surface Energy Balance (SEB) approach, which exploits thermal infrared (TIR) observations of the Earth's surface acquired from satellite and/or airborne platforms (Norman et al., 1995;Chehbouni et al., 1997;Bastiaanssen et al., 1998a, b;Su, 2002).In the recent years, several SEB schemes have been developed (Schmugge et al., 2002) with varying degree of complexity.In all these schemes the evapotranspiration is derived in terms of latent heat flux, λET (W m −2 ), ad it is computed as the residual of the surface energy balance equation: where R n (W m −2 ) is the total net radiation, G 0 (W m −2 ) is the soil heat flux, and H (W m −2 ) is the sensible heat flux.
The largest uncertainty in estimating λET is due to the computation of H. Following the bulk resistance or "one-source" approach for a natural surface, the basic equation for soil-plus-canopy sensible heat flux, H, is given by: where ρ (kg m −3 ) is the air density, c p is the specific heat of air (J kg is the so-called "aerodynamic surface temperature" (Kalma and Jupp, 1990), defined as the air temperature "which satisfies the bulk resistance formulation for sensible heat transport, H" (Kustas et al., 2007), T a (K) is the air temperature at some reference height, R a (s m −1 ) is the aerodynamic resistance (Brutsaert, 1982), R ex (s m −1 ) is the excess resistance associated with heat transport and R ah (s m −1 ) is the total resistance to heat transport across the temperature difference (T 0h -T a ).Since the aerodynamic surface temperature is usually unknown, the common approach used in various singlesource schemes is to empirically relate the radiative surface temperature, T r , to T 0h or directly to the term (T 0h -T a ).Differently, the so-called "two-sources" approach (Shuttleworth and Wallace, 1985;  fluxes in two components, i.e. soil and vegetation, as viewed from a remote sensor with an incidence angle θ.Hence, the total sensible heat flux is given by the sum of H s , related to soil, and H c , related to the vegetation canopy: In Eqs. ( 4) and ( 5) T c and T s (K) are, respectively, the canopy and soil aerodynamic temperatures and R s (s m −1 ) is the soil resistance to the heat transfer (Goudriaan, 1977;Norman et al., 1995;Kustas and Norman 1999a, b).
In this paper the SEBAL single-source model (Bastiaanssen et al., 1998a, b) and the TSEB two-sources model (Norman et al., 1995) have been applied to determine the surface energy fluxes in an area located in the South West of Sicily and characterized by typical Mediterranean crops.
Of particular interest to this study is the use of airborne high-resolution (3 m×3 m) remote sensing data in the VIS/NIR and TIR regions providing a detailed observation of spectral reflectance and surface temperature.The remote acquisition has been taken during an intensive field campaign carried out in 2005, where intensive data including soil and hydrological measurements have been collected.This intensive field data set has been used to implement the soil water balance model SWAP (van Dam et al., 1997) in a spatially distributed way.The spatial distribution of canopy parameters has been derived from airborne observations in the visible and near-infrared ranges, and it has been used to define the upper boundary condition of the SWAP model (D'Urso et al., 1999).The output of the spatially distributed SWAP includes actual evapotranspiration calculated from the root water uptake, validated by means of soil water content measurements.As such, these ET values have been considered as the "reference" in the comparison between SEBAL and TSEB energy balance models, in absence of a sufficiently dense network of flux instrumentations installed in the study area, which would have been impossible to install in an efficient way due to the high level of agricultural fragmentation.

Models description
SEBAL, TSEB and SWAP models use different approaches to calculate actual evapotranspiration.Key differences and peculiarities of the models are described in the following subsections.

SEBAL and TSEB models
A first application of the models in the same study area can be found in Ciraolo et al. (2006) and in Minacapilli et al. (2007).A detailed description of SEBAL and TSEB models can be found in Norman et al. (1995), Bastiaanssen et al. (1998a, b), Kustas and Norman (1999a, b).Here we only describe the main differences of the models.
In both models, the estimation of total net radiation, R n , can be obtained by computing the net available energy considering the rate lost by surface reflection in the shortwave (0.3/2.5 µm) and emitted in the longwave (6/100 µm): where R swd (W m −2 ) is the global incoming solar radiation, α (-) is the surface albedo, ε is the atmospheric emissivity (-), ε 0 is the surface emissivity (-), σ (W m −2 K −4 ) is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, T a (K) is the air temperature, and T 0 (K) is the land surface temperature derivable from thermal remote sensing data.Moreover, the TSEB model splits the net radiation R n between canopy (R n,c ) and soil (R n,s ), that is computed as where R n is obtained using Eq. ( 6) and θ z is the solar zenith angle.The soil heat flux, G 0 (W m −2 ) can be evaluated using different empirical approaches.
In the SEBAL model, the value of G 0 is expressed as a fraction of R n according the following relationship: where NDVI (-) is a simple radiometric index derived from red and near infrared bands (Liang, 2004).
In TSEB model, the soil heat flux G 0 is expressed as a fraction c g (≈0.35) of the net radiation at the soil surface R n,s .
The estimation of sensible heat flux H obtained solving Eq. (2) for SEBAL model or Eqs.(3-5) for TSEB model requires, the computation of the total aerodynamic resistance, R ah , which in both models can be evaluated by the following equation (Brutsaert, 1982): where d 0 (m) is the displacement height, z 0,M and z 0,H are two roughness parameters (m) that can be evaluated as functions of the canopy height (Shuttleworth and Wallace, 1985), u is the wind speed (m s −1 ) measured at height z u (m), k is the von Karman's constant (≈0.4), z T is the height of the air temperature measurement, Ψ H (-) and Ψ M (-) are two stability correction functions for momentum and heat transfer, respectively Introduction

Conclusions References
Tables Figures

Back Close
Full Screen / Esc Printer-friendly Version Interactive Discussion (Brutsaert, 1982).A detailed description of the above mentioned parameters can be found in Brutsaert (1982).
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, in the SEBAL model, H is computed via single-source scheme assuming a linear relationship between T r and ∆T =(T 0h -T a ) to be calibrated on the basis of the knowledge of two boundary conditions identified within the image itself ("anchor" pixels).Hence, a dry non evaporating area is identified and a latent heat flux equal to zero is considered (H=R n -G 0 ); in a second wet area, i.e. a water body or a fully evaporating surface, it is assumed H=0.In these anchor pixels the ∆T values derived by the inversion of Eq. ( 2) and the T r values observed from the TIR remote observation are used to calibrate the coefficients a and b of the following linear relationship: Successively, Eq. ( 11) is applied to all the image pixels in order to compute ∆T from the corresponding T r , and hence H by using Eq. ( 2).Details of the procedure above can be found in Bastiaanssen et al. (1998a, b).
Differently, the two-sources TSEB model considers the contributions from the soil and the canopy separately and it uses a few additional parameters to solve for sensible heat H as the sum of the contribution of the soil, H s , and of the canopy, H c , according to Eq. (3).In particular, assuming that the observed radiometric temperature, T r , is a combination of soil and canopy temperatures, the TSEB model add the following relationship (Becker and Li, 1990) to the set of Eqs. ( 4) and ( 5): where f θ is the vegetation directional fractional cover (Campbell and Normann, 1998).
Besides the adjustment for the angular dependence of thermal observations, TSEB does not require the linearity assumption introduced in SEBAL through Eq. ( 11).
The set of Eqs. ( 4), ( 5) and ( 12) includes four unknowns variables (H c , H s , T c , and T s ); as a first approximation, assuming that the vegetation is unstressed and transpiring 8 Introduction

Conclusions References
Tables Figures

Back Close
Full  Taylor, 1972) to estimate the latent heat flux λET c as: where α p (-) is the Priestly-Taylor parameter, which is initially set to 1.26 ("potential" condition) and progressively adjusted, as explained below.In Eq. ( 13) ∆ is the slope of the saturation vapour pressure-temperature curve at T C (Pa K −1 ) and γ is the psychrometric constant.Using Eq. ( 8) to compute R n,c , Eq. ( 13) is solved for H c and then Eq. ( 4) is inverted to estimate T c as: The constraint in Eq. ( 12) can then be inverted to estimate T s as: (15) Prediction of T s allows for calculation of H s via Eq.( 5) using, for R s , a relationship suggested by the Authors in the original paper of the model (Norman et al., 1995;Kustas and Norman 1999a, b).Consequently the soil evaporation E s can be computed as: If the vegetation canopy is undergoing water stress, Eq. ( 13) will lead to an overestimation of λET c , which turns in a negative value of E s in Eq. ( 16).This problem is addressed by iteratively decreasing α p in Eq. ( 13) until a positive E s is reached (Kustas and Norman, 1999).Introduction

Conclusions References
Tables Figures

Back Close
Full Screen / Esc Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion
For both the models, once the R n , G 0 and H spatial distributions are obtained, the λET (W m −2 ) spatial distribution is computed using Eq. ( 1).Finally, the daily evapotranspiration ET d (mm d −1 ) can be obtained by the time integration of λET using the evaporative fraction parameter, Λ (Menenti and Choudhury, 1993): Several studies (Brutsaert and Sugita, 1992;Crago, 1996) demonstrated that, within daytime hours, the Λ(0−1) values are almost constant in time.This fact suggests to use the Λ parameter as a temporal integration parameter.Following this hypothesis, the daily evapotranspiration, ET d (mm d −1 ), can be derived using the equation: where λ (MJ kg −1 ) is the latent heat of vaporization and R n,24 represents the averaged net daily radiation, that can be derived by direct measurement or by using the classical formulation proposed in FAO 56 paper (Allen et al., 1998).

2.2
The agro-hydrological SWAP model SWAP (Soil-Water-Atmosphere-Plant) is a one-dimensional physically based model for water, heat and solute transport in saturated and unsaturated soil, and includes modules to simulate irrigation practice and crop growth (Kroes and van Dam, 2003).SWAP simulates the vertical soil water flow and solute transport in close interaction with crop growth.Richards' equation (Richards, 1931), including root water extraction, is applied to compute transient soil water flow: under specified upper and lower boundary conditions.In Eq. ( 19) z (cm) is the vertical coordinate, assumed positive upwards, t (d) is time, C (cm ) is the root uptake term that, in the case of uniform root distribution, is defined by the following equations: ) is the potential transpiration, z r (cm) is the rooting depth and α w (-) is a h-dependant reduction factor which accounts for water deficit and oxygen stress (Feddes et al., 1978), K c (-) is the crop coefficient, ET 0 (cm d −1 ) is the reference evapotranspiration and K gr (-) is an extinction coefficient for global solar radiation.
The numerical solution of Eqs. ( 19), ( 20) and ( 21) is possible after specifying initial, and upper and lower boundary conditions and the soil hydraulic properties, i.e. the soil water retention curve, θ(h), and the soil hydraulic conductivity function, K (h) are known; detailed field and/or laboratory investigations are therefore needed.
In this study, the application of SWAP has been carried out in a spatially distributed way, according to the procedure suggested by D'Urso (2001).The study area has therefore been discretized in individual one-dimensional units, with homogenous soil and canopy parameters.Canopy parameters such crop coefficient, K c , and the leaf area index, LAI, have been determined by using the remote sensing approach proposed by D'Urso et al. (1999,2001).Thus, for a given set of climatic variables, using the above mentioned approach, the spatial distributions of the potential evapotranspiration has been derived, and this information has been used to define -in each elementary unit -the upper boundary condition of the soil water balance model SWAP, represented by Eq. ( 21).A detailed description of the entire procedure can be found in D'Urso (2001) and in Minacapilli et al. (2008).Introduction

Conclusions References
Tables Figures

Back Close
Full made in selected locations simultaneously to the flight, in order to perform an empirical calibration of the thermal images acquired by the ATM sensor.Figure 2a and b shows the accuracy obtained from the abovementioned corrections in both VIS/NIR and TIR bands.The geometric correction of the entire data set has been performed using the NERC Azgcorr software, that performs geocorrection of images using aircraft navigation data and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the acquired zone.

SWAP model parameterization
The minimum data-set required for the application of the SWAP model includes four main information types: i) soil hydraulic parameters; ii) lower boundary condition, defined by the groundwater table or the water flux to or from an existent aquifer; iii) parameters related to the upper boundary, i.e. rainfall and/or potential evapotranspiration; iv) soil moisture content or soil water pressure head profile for the initial condition.Maps of soil hydraulic properties have been realised by means of a soil survey with an intensive undisturbed sampling.Laboratory investigations on the undisturbed soil cores have been carried to determine the soil water hydraulic and retention curves required in input for SWAP.The saturated hydraulic conductivity, K s (cm d −1 ) has been determined by means of the constant head technique (Reynolds et al., 2002); soil water content θ has been determined in correspondence of a set of pressure head values, h, ranging from −5 to −15 300 cm by means of a hanging water column apparatus (Burke et al., 1986) and a pressure plate apparatus (Dane and Hopmans, 2002).The water retention function of van Genuchten (1980) has been fitted to the measured θ-h values by using the RETC (RETention Curve) code (van Genuchten et al., 1991).The unsaturated hydraulic conductivity function has been derived by using the Mualem-van Genuchten model (van Genuchten, 1980).Due to the limited spatial variability of soil properties, it has been possible to consider an unique soil profile for the simulations of soil water balance in the study area, which characteristics are summarised in Table 1.
The intensive field measurements collected during 2005 showed that the soil water content was always near to saturated value from 1.2 m to lower depths.Therefore, the Introduction

Conclusions References
Tables Figures

Back Close
Full was obtained by multiplying the reference evapotranspiration (ET 0 ) with the crop coefficients (K c ).The ET 0 was determined by using the Penman-Monteith equation (Allen et al., 1998), while the spatial distribution of the crop coefficients was obtained using the remote sensing approach proposed by D'Urso (2001).As mentioned in Sect.2.2, the procedure requires the knowledge of canopy parameters such as the surface albedo, α, the leaf area index, LAI, the crop height h c , and the standard set of meteorological data (wind speed at reference height, shortwave incoming solar radiation, air temperature and humidity).For the study area, the crop parameters have been derived using spectral reflectance values acquired from the ATM VIS/NIR bands.In particular, the surface albedo have been computed as weighted average over VIS and NIR spectrum assuming as weighting parameter the solar irradiance for each bandwith (Liang, 2004).The LAI spatial distribution has been detected using the following semi-empirical relationship (Clevers, 1989): in which WDVI is a vegetation index derived from ATM red and near-infrared bands (Clevers, 1989), WDVI ∞ is the asymptotic value of WDVI for LAI→∞, and α * is an extinction coefficient, denoting the increase of LAI for a unit increase of WDVI, that has to be estimated from simultaneous measurements of LAI and WDVI.In our case, the calibration of Eq. ( 22) was preliminarily carried out by in-situ LAI measurements collected with the portable instrument LAI2000 (Li-Cor, Lincoln, NE).A complete description of the leaf area index estimation conducted for the study area is given in Minacapilli et al. (2005Minacapilli et al. ( , 2008)).(Fig. 3a); afterwards the values were spatially aggregated using a regular vector grid having a mesh size of 15 m×15 m (Fig. 3b) and corresponding to the set of single units that will be used for the spatially distributed application of SWAP model.Considering that, with the exception of the grape, all the other crops in the study area are evergreen, the only ATM airborne surveys, acquired on 16.05.2005has been sufficient to derive crop coefficients values as input in the SWAP simulation period (15.04.2005-15.05.2005).At the starting date, a lumped value of the crop coefficient for grape was derived from specific literature (Allen et al., 1998) by assuming a linear variation during the period of simulation.
Others crop parameters required by SWAP, i.e. k gr , z r and the critical pressure head values defining the reduction factor α w in Eq. ( 20), were taken from specific literature (Taylor and Ashcroft, 1972;Doorenbos and Kassam, 1979;Wesseling et al., 1991) with some minor adaptations based on local observations.Crop parameters for the case study used for the simulations are summarized in Table 2.

Results and discussion
The following results focus on the crop evapotranspiration estimated using both energy (SEBAL and TSEB) and soil-water (SWAP) balance modelling approaches.In paragraph 4.1, a preliminary validation of SWAP model at field scale is discussed; afterwards the application of SWAP model has been replicated in a distributed way using the approach described in paragraph 3. The validation of SWAP has been carried out in correspondence of three different locations, inside the experimental farm (Fig. 1), where measurements of soil water content have been continuously acquired during the simulation period.Mean K c values for the different crop types at these locations -and extracted from the map in Fig. 3a -are summarized in Table 2.As evidenced in the plots of Fig. 4, a good agreement has been found between measured and simulated soil water content; a more complete description of the validation procedures of SWAP model at field scale can be found in Blanda (2007).
From the application of the SWAP model to the study area, we have simulated the actual evapotranspiration for each elementary unit on a daily basis; an example of the resulting map for the simulation day corresponding to the NERC flight is shown in Fig. 5.A summary of the values obtained for each crop type is given in Table 3. From Fig. 5, we may notice a significant spatial variability in evapotranspiration in the olive orchard, as highlighted by the higher coefficient of variation (34.8%).This behaviour is driven largely by variations of the fraction of ground covered by canopy (fraction cover) inside each 15 m×15 m simulated unit.Otherwise for the citrus grove the greater uniformity of the fraction cover involves a lower spatial variability in evapotranspiration patterns.On the same date the vineyards was less developed so that less evapotranspiration rates was recognized.

Estimating ET by SEB models and final comparison
The two surface energy balance models, i.e.SEBAL and TSEB, have been applied by using VIS/NIR and TIR data acquired during the NERC campaign on 16 May 2005 as described in Sect.3.1.The output of these models has been compared in terms of spatial patterns of actual ET, as well as in terms of statistical correlation on a pixelby-pixel basis.The resulting maps of ET, as displayed in Fig. 6a and b, have been produced with a spatial resolution of 3 m; thanks to this high spatial resolution of TIR

Conclusions References
Tables Figures

Back Close
Full Screen / Esc

Printer-friendly Version
Interactive Discussion data, it is possible to observe in great detail the spatial patterns of ET, which may improve the interpretation of the model results.The plot in Fig. 7 is a pixel-wise scatterplot of the daily ET values obtained with the two models.This plot evidences that SEBAL produces an underestimation of ET compared to TSEB of about 1 mm d −1 .This underestimation can be explained by giving a closer look to the values of the different terms of the energy balance, as shown by Fig. 8, where maps and scatterplots of sensible heat flux H and soil heat flux G are represented.From this figure, we may notice that SEBAL gives a systematic strong overestimation of H, which is not compensated by the opposite behaviour of G.This effect, which has been already observed in other similar studies (Savige et al., 2005;Ciraolo et al., 2006;Minacapilli et al., 2007), has been related to an underestimation of the total resistance to the heat transport over sparsely vegetated surface, since SEBAL does not take into account the soil-canopy interactions.Diversely, TSEB model based on the partitioning between soil and canopy is able to provide a more physically-based picture of the surface resistances involved.As a result, being the available energy (R n −G) quite similar between the two models, the overestimation of sensible heat flux in SEBAL is mainly responsible for the disagreement in λET shown in Fig. 7.
In the first phase, assuming the actual evapotranspiration values simulated by SWAP as reference, the ET values obtained using SEBAL and TSEB models have been spatially aggregated by using the same 15 m×15 m grid adopted in the SWAP simulation.
A further comparison has then been carried out by considering the spatial distribution of the different values of ET, as shown by Fig. 9a and b.Again, we notice that the different scale does not compensate for the difference in ET between TSEB and SEBAL, already observed at 3 m×3 m pixel resolution.
Finally, an assessment of models performances were evaluated computing the dif- The MD spatial distributions allow to identify where the largest discrepancies occur: for citrus and vineyard similar differences for both models, but with a lesser extent for the TSEB, can be observed.
Olive fields are however characterized by larger discrepancies in the spatial patterns.The analysis of frequency distribution of MD values, shown in Fig. 10a-c, evidences that these discrepancies are related to canopy fragmentation.This phenomena can be explained using different classes of LAI, i.e. over sparsely vegetated surfaces (0.5<LAI<2.5) the largest discrepancies between one-and two source approaches are particularly evident since SEBAL does not split energy fluxes into soil and vegetation components.
Figure 11 shows the comparison between crop average evapotranspiration ET obtained with SWAP, SEBAL and TSEB models.Also from this type of comparison a better agreement can be recognized between SWAP and TSEB, whereas a general underestimation of ET values is obtained using SEBAL.For the vineyard both TSEB and SEBAL ET values are equally underestimated compared with the values evaluated with SWAP.This behaviour might be due to the initial development stage of vineyard on 16/05 with low LAI and a strong row architecture of the plants, causing high values of radiometric temperatures influenced by the bare soil rather than the canopy.

Conclusions
The main aim of this study was the assessment of actual crop evapotranspiration rates, ET, derived using both surface energy balance and agro-hydrological modelling approaches.Since we focused on the evaluation of ET in a spatially distributed manner, two algorithms (SEBAL and TSEB), specifically developed as Remote Sensing based surface energy balance models, were tested.Regarding the agro-hydrological modelling approach, a procedure combining the agro-hydrological SWAP model with high resolution remote sensing data, allowing to simulate in a spatially distributed way all the components of water balance in Soil Plant Atmosphere system, was applied.and/or calibrate the estimates of the soil water balance system, using spatial soil water measurements.
In the present paper the crop evapotranspiration values estimated with SEBAL and TSEB models are compared to the values obtained with the Agro-Hydrological SWAP model.Using the procedure suggested by D'Urso ( 2001), the SWAP model has been applied in a spatially distributed way, and the actual evapotranspiration outputs have been used as references value for the comparison between SEBAL and TSEB.
Considering that the study area is characterized by typical Mediterranean sparse vegetation, i.e. olive, citrus and vineyards, we focused at the main conceptual differences between SEBAL "single-source" and TSEB "two-sources".The results of the investigation indicated that the remote sensing two-source approach used in TSEB model represents turbulent and radiative surface fluxes in a more realistic way than the one-source approach.Using spatially distributed evapotranspiration estimates obtained by an accurate application of SWAP the largest discrepancies between TSEB and SEBAL occurred over sparsely vegetated areas, where TSEB provides a more accurate estimate of spatial variability of aerodynamic surface resistance of the coupled soil/canopy system.
rate, the TSEB model uses the Priestly-Taylor equation (Priestly and The study area covers an extension of approximately 20 ha, located in the southwestern coast of Sicily (Fig.1).Orchard crops (mainly olives, grapes and citrus) represent the dominant vegetation; soil can be classified as silty clay loam (USDA classification).During 2005, daily meteorological data (incoming short-wave solar radiation, air-temperature and humidity, wind speed and rainfall) have been acquired with standard meteorological instrumentations.A soil survey has been carried out to identify the main soil hydraulic parameters, needed as input in SWAP.In particular temporal variability of soil moisture contents in the different plots (Fig.1) and at different depths were measured using TDR techniques and Diviner 2000 Sentek capacitive sensors.These values have been used for validating SWAP in selected locations.Canopy parameters and radiometric surface temperatures have been acquired during a airborne campaign supported by NERC (National Environment Research Council, UK).3.1 Aircraft remote sensing pre-processingThe NERC airborne campaign has taken place on 16 May 2005 at about noon (local time).The flight altitude of 1400 m and the optical characteristics of the ATM sensor (Airborne Thematic Mapper) has produced images with a nominal spatial resolution (pixel size) of 3×3 m.ATM has 8 spectral bands in the visible and near-infrared ranges (VIS/NIR) 2 in the short-wave infrared (SWIR) and 1 in the thermal infrared region (TIR).At the same time of the acquisition flight, a field survey was carried out by measuring spectral and vegetation parameters in correspondence of predefined homogeneous targets.Spectral measurements on water, bare soil and grass surfaces have been acquired by using an ASDI FieldSpect HH spectroradiometer; these measurements have been used for the radiometric and atmospheric corrections of the VIS-NIR images of ATM by using the empirical line method(Slater et al., 1996).The resulting surface reflectance values have been successively used to calculate the surface albedo and the vegetation indexes.At-surface temperature measurements have been out considering a zero flux at the bottom of the soil profile.The upper boundary condition, in terms of potential evapotranspiration ET p (mm d −1 ) Otherwise, as suggested by other authors (Anderson et al., 2004) the crop heigh, h c , has been calculated using a polynomial relationship derived from field data of LAI and h c .Once derived α, LAI and h c crop parameters, the pixel based spatial distribution of crop coefficients K c has been derived for the date of the NERC airborne overflight (16 May 2005, J=135) with the resolution of 3 m×3 m 2. Finally, in paragraph 4.2 evaluation of the spatially patterns of surface energy fluxes and evapotraspiration values predicted by SEBAL and TSEB models is showed, as well as the final comparison of spatially distributed crop evapotranspiration estimated with the three different approaches. of SWAP at field scale and its spatially distributed application ference MD (mm/d) between the actual ET obtained by means of SEBAL/TSEB and SWAP.Maps presenting the spatial distribution of MD values are shown in Fig.9c and d: for both models MD values range from −2.5 to 2.5 mm/d with a smaller mean value using 14 mm/d) compared to SEBAL (−0.55 mm/d).
h below which optimum water uptake reduction starts in the root zone in case of high atmospheric demand)
to use this type of comparison has been driven by the awareness of difficulties in performing flux field measurements to directly validate surface energy balance models, i.e. eddy covariance or scintillometer techniques, especially in agricultural areas with high level of crop fragmentation.Agro-hydrological approaches based on mass water balance, such as the SWAP model, instead provide the opportunity to validate choice

Table 2 .
Main crop parameters used for the simulations in the study area (standard deviation values are given in parentheses).