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Relevant methods for estimating reference crop evaporation and crop evaporation for selected, pertinent crops growing in the semiarid environments of Arizona and New Mexico are investigated. Daily evaporation estimates over the period 2000-2010 are calculated using standard meteorological data from 35 weather stations. Compared to the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration estimate, the Hargreaves and Priestley-Taylor equations overestimate by 5-15% while the temperature-based Blaney-Criddle method currently used in New Mexico underestimates by 8-13%, on average, the discrepancy being most severe in highly advective regions. Crop evaporation estimates are compared to the one-step Matt-Shuttleworth approach. The Blaney-Criddle method systematically underestimates crop evaporation by 7-30%, while underestimation using the climatically adjusted FAO-56 crop coefficient approach is 1-8% for short crops but ~20% for tall pecan and citrus orchards grown at atmospherically arid locations. Crop surface resistances derived using the Matt-Shuttleworth approach at Fabian Garcia in southern New Mexico compare favorably to literature values.

This thesis has evaluated how electrical surface resistance can be measured on conductive coated textiles using two different probes. The electrical surface resistance is a measurement for how difficult it is for current to flow through a material. For textiles, the surface resistance can be measured using four metallic plates, that measure the difference between current supply and voltage drop, this method is called a linear four-point probe.   There is no standard method for measuring the electrical surface resistance on conductive textiles. Therefore, it is not possible to compare textiles made by different producers. It is also not possible to decide what the true resistance is and as conductive textiles are becoming more popular to use, this has started to become a problem in the industry.   Two probes with electrodes of different dimensions were used to evaluate how different electrodes would affect the measured resistance. Measurements were conducted on conductive coated textiles with varying parameters, like coating thickness, sample size and textile construction, to show how the electrical resistance properties differ depending on what probe was used.   It was found that in contrast to other research on conductive textiles and collinear four-point probes, the probes used in this study could detect electrical anisotropic properties. The resistance was different depending on what angle it was measured in. This was found for both a thicker coating and a thinner one. It was also found that the probes could detect a correlation between the angular resistance and the textile construction used.   By measuring the resistance on small samples with the same dimension as the probes electrodes, the resistance was increased compared to when measurements were conducted on samples with dimensions significantly larger than the probes.   Furthermore, the results showed that increasing the distance between the inner electrodes of the probe decreased the measured resistance for both large and small samples. Additionally, it was found that by increasing the width of the outer electrodes the resistance was decreased, an increase in outer electrode width also made it easier to detect electrical anisotropic properties.

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A fast and efficient method for the design of multi-layered circuit analog absorbing structures is developed. The method is based on optimization of specular reflection coefficient of a multi-layered absorbing structure comprising of lossy FSS layers by using Genetic Algorithm and circuit equivalent models of FSS layers. With the introduced method, two illustrative absorbing structures are designed with -15 dB reflectivity for normal incidence case in the frequency bands of 10-31 GHz and 5-46 GHz, respectively. To the author&rsquo / s knowledge, designed absorbers are superior in terms of frequency bandwidth to similar studies conducted so far in the literature. For broadband scattering characterization of periodic structures, numerical codes are developed. The introduced method is improved with the employment of developed FDTD codes to the proposed method. By taking the limitations regarding production facilities into consideration, a five-layered circuit analog absorber is designed and manufactured. It is shown that the manufactured structure is capable of 15 dB reflectivity minimization in a frequency band of 3.2-12 GHz for normal incidence case with an overall thickness of 14.2 mm.

The energy exchange in the soil-snow-vegetation-atmospheresystem was studied to improve the quantitative knowledge of thegoverning processes. The lack of such knowledge contributes tothe uncertainty in the applicability of many existing modelsindependent of the temporal or spatial scale. The theoreticalbackground and available methods for measurements and numericalsimulations were reviewed. Numerical simulation models andavailable data sets representing open land and boreal forestwere evaluated in both diurnal and seasonal time-scales.Surface heat fluxes, snow depth, soil temperatures andmeteorological conditions were measured at an agriculturalfield in central Sweden over two winters, 1997-1999. Twoone-dimensional simulation models of different complexity wereused to simulate the heat and water transfer in thesoil-snow-atmosphere system and compared with the measurements.Comparison of simulated and observed heat fluxes showed thatparameter values governing the upper boundary condition weremore important than the formulation of the internal mass andheat balance of the snow cover. The models were useful toevaluate the lack of energy balance closure in the observedsurface heat fluxes, which underlined the importance ofimproved accuracy in eddy correlation measurements of latentflow during winter conditions. The representation of boreal forest in the land surfacescheme used within a weather forecast model was tested with athree-year data set from the NOPEX forest site in centralSweden. The formulation with separate energy balances forvegetation and the soil/snow beneath tree cover improvedsimulation of the seasonal and diurnal variations of latent andsensible heat flux compared with an older model version.Further improvements of simulated surface heat fluxes could beexpected if the variation of vegetation properties within andbetween years and a new formulation of the boundary conditionsfor heat flux into the soil is included. Keywords: Surface energy balance, Snow, Boreal forest,SVAT models, Eddy-correlation Measurements, Latent heat flux,Sensible heat flux, Net radiation, Soil temperature,Aerodynamic roughness, Surface resistance / QC 20100614

<p>The energy exchange in the soil-snow-vegetation-atmospheresystem was studied to improve the quantitative knowledge of thegoverning processes. The lack of such knowledge contributes tothe uncertainty in the applicability of many existing modelsindependent of the temporal or spatial scale. The theoreticalbackground and available methods for measurements and numericalsimulations were reviewed. Numerical simulation models andavailable data sets representing open land and boreal forestwere evaluated in both diurnal and seasonal time-scales.Surface heat fluxes, snow depth, soil temperatures andmeteorological conditions were measured at an agriculturalfield in central Sweden over two winters, 1997-1999. Twoone-dimensional simulation models of different complexity wereused to simulate the heat and water transfer in thesoil-snow-atmosphere system and compared with the measurements.Comparison of simulated and observed heat fluxes showed thatparameter values governing the upper boundary condition weremore important than the formulation of the internal mass andheat balance of the snow cover. The models were useful toevaluate the lack of energy balance closure in the observedsurface heat fluxes, which underlined the importance ofimproved accuracy in eddy correlation measurements of latentflow during winter conditions.</p><p>The representation of boreal forest in the land surfacescheme used within a weather forecast model was tested with athree-year data set from the NOPEX forest site in centralSweden. The formulation with separate energy balances forvegetation and the soil/snow beneath tree cover improvedsimulation of the seasonal and diurnal variations of latent andsensible heat flux compared with an older model version.Further improvements of simulated surface heat fluxes could beexpected if the variation of vegetation properties within andbetween years and a new formulation of the boundary conditionsfor heat flux into the soil is included.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: Surface energy balance, Snow, Boreal forest,SVAT models, Eddy-correlation Measurements, Latent heat flux,Sensible heat flux, Net radiation, Soil temperature,Aerodynamic roughness, Surface resistance</p> / QC 20100614

The thesis deals the assessment of the resistance of the existing boulder chute in the river Lomná. At km 1,9 Boulder chute is located in the village Jablunkov. Surface resistance of boulder chute is assessed newly on the basis of non-dimensional shear stress for particle on arbitrarily sloped bed. The calculation of 2D flow was computed by HEC-RAS. On the assessment of resistance was proposed reconstruction of boulder chute.