ARS | Publication request: Estimating Sugarcane Water Requirements for Biofuel Feedstock Production in Maui, Hawaii Using Satellite Imagery

Submitted to: American Geophysical Union
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: September 16, 2011
Publication Date: N/A

Technical Abstract: Water availability is one of the limiting factors for sustainable production of biofuel crops. A common method for determining crop water requirement is to multiply daily potential evapotranspiration (ETo) calculated from meteorological parameters by a crop coefficient (Kc) to obtain actual crop evapotranspiration (ETc). Generic Kc values are available for many crop types but not for sugarcane in Maui, Hawaii, which grows on a relatively unstudied biennial cycle. In this study, an algorithm is being developed to estimate sugarcane Kc using normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery. A series of ASTER NDVI maps were used to depict canopy development over time or fractional canopy cover (fc) which was measured with a handheld multispectral camera in the fields during satellite overpass days. Canopy cover was correlated with NDVI values. Then the NDVI based canopy cover was used to estimate Kc curves for sugarcane plants. The remotely estimated Kc and ETc values were compared and validated with ground-truth eddy covariance ETc measurements.