Abstract

The increasing concentration of CO2 and other radiative activetrace gases in the atmosphere is causing tropospherictemperatures to rise. Changes in other climatic featuressuch as precipitation, cloudiness, humidity, and windinessare likely to follow changes in temperature. Such changescould have deep implications for hydrologic processes in generaland for water availability to sustain both rain-fed andirrigated agriculture, in particular.Evapotranspiration (ET) is the compound term describingthe physical processes of water transfer into the atmosphereby evaporation from soil and transpiration through vegetation;ET constitutes an important component of hydrologicalbalance particularly in semi-arid and sub-humid climates.Evapotranspiration is determined by various mathematicalmodels using climatic factors such as temperature, radiation,humidity, and wind speed, while its direct measurement isseldom available in experimental fields.A relatively new technology using on remote sensing to retrieveland surface parameters such as surface temperature,albedo and vegetation indices - which are indispensable to remotelysensed ET models - is adopted here to map regional,meso- and macro-scale patterns of ET at the earth's surfacein a globally consistent and economically feasible manner.The aim of our research is to assess a technique to retrieveET maps from remote sensing images by the combination oftwo different procedures. The first one, known as trianglemethod, computes the evapotranspiration fraction (EF) de-fined as the ratio LE/Rn, where Rn is the net radiation atthe surface and LE is the latent heat flux. LE is directly proportionalto ET. In order to retrieve LE, and consequentlythe surface evapotranspiration, a second procedure computesthe net radiation of the investigated area. Therefore, by inversion,it is possible to obtain an estimate of the ET.The validation of these variables, the net radiation and ofthe evapotranspiration derived from MODIS data, has beenundertaken on the Capitanata area, Southern Italy, by comparisonof model results with in-situ measurements providedby the Consorzio per la Bonifica della Capitanata di Foggia.

Autore Pugliese

• Portoghese Ivan , Vurro Michele , Matarrese Raffaella

Tutti gli autori

• Matarrese R.; Portoghese I.; Vurro M.; Soldo P.

Titolo volume/Rivista

Tethys

Anno di pubblicazione

2011

ISSN

1139-3394

ISBN

Non Disponibile

Numero di citazioni Wos

Nessuna citazione

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Numero di citazioni Scopus

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Settori ERC

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Codici ASJC

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