Skip to main content
ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #324222
Title: Application of remote sensing-based two-source energy balance model for mapping field surface fluxes with composite and component surface temperatures

Author
item SONG, L. - Beijing Normal University
item LIU, S. - Chinese Academy Of Sciences
item Kustas, William - Bill
item ZHOU, J. - University Of Electronic Science And Technology Of China
item XU, Z. - Beijing Normal University
item XIA, T. - Tsinghua University
item LI, M. - University Of Electronic Science And Technology Of China

Submitted to: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/25/2016
Publication Date: 2/5/2016
Citation: Song, L., Liu, S., Kustas, W.P., Zhou, J., Xu, Z., Xia, T., Li, M. 2016. Application of remote sensing-based two-source energy balance model for mapping field surface fluxes with composite and component surface temperatures. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 230–231:8–19.

Interpretive Summary: Operational application of a remote sensing-based energy balance models to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) and the components of soil evaporation (E), and plant transpiration (T) is very useful for managing water resources in arid and semiarid watersheds. The two-source energy balance (TSEB) model uses remotely sensed composite land surface temperature (Tcomp) from satellites (a mixture of soil and plant temperatures) as input and applies a simplified formulation of plant transpiration to estimate soil (Ts) and vegetation (Tv) temperatures for computing E and T. The TSEB model can also use soil and canopy temperature measurements directly, if available, without resorting to a simplified T estimate. In this study, soil and vegetation component temperatures supplied by the Advanced Scanning Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) satellite are used as model inputs to TSEB to evaluate whether more reliable E and T estimates can be estimated over an irrigated agricultural region in an arid environment. Based on comparisons with ground observations, the TSEB model output using Ts and Tv from ASTER data is found to compute more reliable E and T estimates compared to applying TSEB with Tcomp. Thus given accurate soil and canopy temperatures, TSEB is likely to provide more reliable estimates of plant water use and values of water use efficiency at large scales with satellite data. This would significantly advance the development of irrigation scheduling tools for improved water management in arid and semiarid landscapes having limited water resources for agriculture.

Technical Abstract: Operational application of a remote sensing-based two source energy balance model (TSEB) to estimate evaportranspiration (ET) and the components evaporation (E), transpiration (T) at a range of space and time scales is very useful for managing water resources in arid and semiarid watersheds. The TSEB model uses composite land surface temperature as input and applies a simplified Priestly-Taylor formulation to partition this temperature into soil and vegetation component temperatures and then computes subsequent component energy fluxes. The remote sensing-based TSEB model using component temperatures of the soil and canopy has not been adequately evaluated due to a dearth of reliable observations. In this study, soil and vegetation component temperatures partitioned from visible and near infrared and thermal remote sensing data supplied by advanced scanning thermal emission and reflection radiometer (ASTER) are applied as model inputs (TSEBct) to assess and refine the subsequent component energy fluxes estimation in TSEB scheme under heterogeneous land surface conditions in an advective environment. The model outputs including sensible heat flux (H), latent heat flux (LE), component LE from soil and canopy from the TSEBct and original model (TSEBpt) are compared with ground measurements from eddy covariance (EC) and larger aperture scintillometers (LAS) technique, and stable isotopic method. Both model versions yield errors of about 10% with LE observations. However, the TSEBct model output of H and LE are in closer agreement with the observations and is found to be generally more robust in component flux estimation compared to the TSEBpt using the ASTER data in this heterogeneous advective environment. Thus given accurate soil and canopy temperatures, TSEBct may provide more reliable estimates of plant water use and values of water use efficiency at large scales for water resource management in arid and semiarid landscapes.