Location: Water Management and Conservation Research
Project Number: 2020-13660-009-010-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2022
End Date: Sep 30, 2025
Objective:
Evaluate the benefits of implementing a remote sensing technique to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) over irrigated lands in the Lower Colorado River region. The technique utilizes US Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) crop type maps, European Space Agency Sentinel 2 satellite data, and Google Earth Engine online processing.
Approach:
The project will use techniques demonstrated for the Yuma-Wellton Region (manscript in review, J. Irrigation and Drainage Engineering) Observations from four Lower Colorado Irrigation Districts will be used: Imperial, Palo Verde, Colorado River Indian Reservation, and Fort Mojave Indian Reservation. Four years of USBR crop type maps and Sentinel 2 satellite data, collected between 2018 and 2021, will be analyzed for crop growth patterns. The patterns will be aggregated and transformed into FAO-56 crop coefficient traces. Using local weather data and the derived crop coefficients, averaged ET values by crop type will be generated and compared with the existing Reclamation ET estimation approach.
