Recent advances in satellite sensor technology and micrometeorological instrumentation for water flux measurement, coupled with the expansion of automatic weather station networks that provide routine measurements of near-surface climate variables, present new opportunities for combining satellite and ground-based instrumentation to obtain distributed estimates of vegetation water use over wide areas in South Africa. In this study, a novel approach is tested, which uses satellite leaf area index (LAI) data retrieved by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to inform the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith equation for calculating reference evaporation (ET₀) of vegetation phenological activity. The model (ETMODIS) was validated at four sites in three different ecosystems across the country, including semi-arid savanna near Skukuza, mixed community grassland at Bellevue, near Pietermaritzburg, and Groenkop, a mixed evergreen indigenous forest near George, to determine potential for application over wider areas of the South African land surface towards meeting water resource management objectives. At Skukuza, evaluated against 170 days of flux data measured at a permanent eddy covariance (EC) flux tower in 2007, the model (ETMODIS) predicted 194.8 mm evapotranspiration relative to 148.9 mm measured fluxes, an overestimate of 31.7 %, (r² = 0.67). At an adjacent site, evaluated against flux data measured on two discrete periods of seven and eight days in February and May of 2005 using a large aperture scintillometer (SLS), ETMODIS predicted 27.4 mm and 6.7 mm evapotranspiration respectively, relative to measured fluxes of 32.5 and 8.2 mm, underestimates of 15.7 % and 18.3 % in each case (r² = 0.67 and 0.34, respectively). At Bellevue, evaluated against 235 days of evapotranspiration data measured using a surface layer scintillometer (SLS) in 2003, ETMODIS predicted 266.9 mm evapotranspiration relative to 460.2 mm measured fluxes, an underestimate of 42 % (r² = 0.67). At Groenkop, evaluated against data measured using a SLS over three discrete periods of four, seven and seven days in February, June and September/October respectively, ETMODIS predicted 9.7 mm, 10.3 mm and 17.0 mm evapotranspiration, relative to measured fluxes of 10.9 mm, 14.6 mm and 23. 9 mm, underestimates of 22.4 %, 11.2 % and 24.1 % in each case (r² = 0.98, 0.43 and 0.80, respectively). Total measured evapotranspiration exceeded total modelled evapotranspiration in all cases, with the exception of the flux tower site at Skukuza, where evapotranspiration was overestimated by ETMODIS by 31.7 % relative to measured (EC) values for the 170 days in 2007 where corresponding modelled and measured data were available. The most significant differences in measured versus predicted data were recorded at the Skukuza flux tower site in 2007 (31.7 % overestimate), and the Bellevue SLS flux site in 2003 (42 % underestimate); coefficients of determination, a measure of the extent to which modelled data are able to explain observed data at validation periods, with just two exceptions, were within a range of 0.67 – 0.98. Several sources of error and uncertainty were identified, relating predominantly to uncertainties in measured flux data used to evaluate ETMODIS, uncertainties in MODIS LAI submitted to ETMODIS, and uncertainties in ETMODIS itself, including model assumptions, and specific uncertainties relating to various inputs; further application of the model is required to test these uncertainties however, and establish confidence limits in performance. Nevertheless, the results of this study suggest that the technique is generally able to produce estimates of vegetation water use to within reasonably close approximations of measurements acquired using micrometeorological instruments, with r² values within the range of other peer-reviewed satellite remote sensing-based approaches.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:rhodes/vital:4779 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Weideman, Craig Ivan |
| Publisher | Rhodes University, Faculty of Science, Environmental Science |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MSc |
| Format | 154 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Weideman, Craig Ivan |
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