Crop coefficient from satellites

A new paper has been published in Sensors and is now online.

Title: Assessing Crop Coefficients for Natural Vegetated Areas Using Satellite Data and Eddy Covariance Stations

Abstract: The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) method for potential evapotranspiration assessment is based on the crop coefficient, which allows one to relate the reference evapotranspiration of well irrigated grass to the potential evapotranspiration of specific crops. The method was originally developed for cultivated species based on lysimeter measurements of potential evapotranspiration. Not many applications to natural vegetated areas exist due to the lack of available data for these species. In this paper we investigate the potential of using evapotranspiration measurements acquired by micrometeorological stations for the definition of crop coefficient functions of natural vegetated areas and extrapolation to ungauged sites through remotely sensed data. Pastures, deciduous and evergreen forests have been considered and lower crop coefficient values are found with respect to FAO data

CC BY-NC 4.0 Crop coefficient from satellites by Giovanni Ravazzani is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.