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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #66475
Title: ESTIMATING SURFACE ENERGY FLUXES AT DIFFERENT SPATIAL SCALES WITH REMOTE SENSING

Author
item Kustas, William - Bill
item HUMES, KAREN - UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

Submitted to: American Geophysical Union
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/12/1995
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Remotely-sensed data from aircraft and satellite platforms have been used for mapping surface energy fluxes over a variety of surfaces. Some studies have varied the resolution or pixel size of the remotely-sensed data in order to evaluate scale effects on the derived surface fluxes. However, in many of these studies the resistance to turbulent transport was assumed constant over the experimental domain or if allowed to vary, the technique did not consider the changes in key surface parameters such as the aerodynamic roughness. A methodology will be presented that accounts for variation in key surface parameters, such as surface albedo, vegetation cover and surface roughness using primarily remote sensing data. The model considers the energy balance of the soil/substrate and vegetation separately and therefore accomodates differences between radiometric surface temperature and aerodynamic surface temperature. Remote sensing data from an aircraft-based sensor and from a Landsat TM scene over the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed in southern Arizona were used in conjunction with meteorological data for computing spatially distributed surface energy fluxes. Preliminary model calculations using the remote sensing data at pixel resolutions of 120 m, 1 km and the whole scene (5 x 15 km) will be presented and discussed.