A new remote sensing procedure for the estimation of crop water requirements

Abstract

The objective of this work is the development of a new approach for the estimation of water requirements for the most important crops located at Karla Watershed, central Greece. Satellite-based energy balance for mapping evapotranspiration with internalized calibration (METRIC) was used as a basis for the derivation of actual evapotranspiration (ET) and crop coefficient (ET<inf>r</inf>F) values from Landsat ETM+ imagery. MODIS imagery has been also used, and a spatial downscaling procedure is followed between the two sensors for the derivation of a new NDVI product with a spatial resolution of 30 m x 30 m. GER 1500 spectro-radiometric measurements are additionally conducted during 2012 growing season. Cotton, alfalfa, corn and sugar beets fields are utilized, based on land use maps derived from previous Landsat 7 ETM+ images. A filtering process is then applied to derive NDVI values after acquiring Landsat ETM+ based reflectance values from the GER 1500 device. ET<inf>r</inf>F vs NDVI relationships are produced and then applied to the previous satellite based downscaled product in order to finally derive a 30 m x 30 m daily ET<inf>r</inf>F map for the study area. CropWat model (FAO) is then applied, taking as an input the new crop coefficient values with a spatial resolution of 30 m x 30 m available for every crop. CropWat finally returns daily crop water requirements (mm) for every crop and the results are analyzed and discussed. © 2015 Copyright SPIE.