International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 17 (2012) 8593

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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jag

Estimation of evapotranspiration in an arid region by remote sensingA case study in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin
Xingmin Li a,b, , Ling Lu a , Wenfeng Yang c , Guodong Cheng a
a b c

Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 730000 Lanzhou, China Shaanxi Institute of Meteorological Sciences, 710014 Xian, China Shaanxi Meteorological Observatory, 710014 Xian, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Estimating surface evapotranspiration is extremely important for the study of water resources in arid regions. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (NOAA/AVHRR), meteorological observations and data obtained from the Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (WATER) project in 2008 are applied to the evaporative fraction model to estimate evapotranspiration over the Heihe River Basin. The calculation method for the parameters used in the model and the evapotranspiration estimation results are analyzed and evaluated. The results observed within the oasis and the banks of the river suggest that more evapotranspiration occurs in the inland river basin in the arid region from May to September. Evapotranspiration values for the oasis, where the land surface types and vegetations are highly variable, are relatively small and heterogeneous. In the Gobi desert and other deserts with little vegetation, evapotranspiration remains at its lowest level during this period. These results reinforce the conclusion that rational utilization of water resources in the oasis is essential to manage the water resources in the inland river basin. In the remote sensing-based evapotranspiration model, the accuracy of the parameter estimate directly affects the accuracy of the evapotranspiration results; more accurate parameter values yield more precise values for evapotranspiration. However, when using the evaporative fraction to estimate regional evapotranspiration, better calculation results can be achieved only if evaporative fraction is constant in the daytime. 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 8 November 2010 Accepted 7 September 2011 Keywords: Heihe River Basin Evapotranspiration Remote sensing Evaporative fraction

1. Introduction Evapotranspiration is both a heat balance component and a key component of the water budget. Because the inputs and outputs of surface heat and water primarily determine the components and evolution of the geographic environment, understanding evapotranspiration can signicantly improve the modeling of energy balance and water cycle. For research related to global climate change and land surface processes, evapotranspiration data are required to calculate water use efciency, irrigation and water resource distribution; it is also important for the study of climate change patterns, atmospheric circulation modes, carbon balance and related land surface processes and boundary conditions (Avissar, 1998; Verstraeten et al., 2005). For practical applications, it is typically necessary to know both the distribution of evapotranspiration and the general water consumption trend within the region. Therefore, estimating regional

Corresponding author at: Shaanxi Institute of Meteorological Sciences, 710014 Xian, China. Tel.: +86 29 81619291. E-mail address: lixingmin803@163.com (X. Li). 0303-2434/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jag.2011.09.008

evapotranspiration is a key issue. Traditional methods like reference crop evapotranspiration assume homogeneous land coverage and structure, but these conditions are difcult to meet for large regions. In recent years, because of the rapid developments in remote sensing technology, the spatial, temporal and spectral resolution of satellite data is continuously improving. Surface characteristics, such as albedo, vegetation coverage, land surface temperature, and leaf area index, can be retrieved from visible, near-infrared, thermal infrared and other wave bands. These data provide a basis for estimating evapotranspiration from farmland and other regions and have attracted widespread attention for the use of remote sensing technologies to study regional evapotranspiration (Li et al., 2009a). Evapotranspiration with remote sensing technology has been studied thoroughly in China; for example, the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) model (Bastiaanssen et al., 1998a,b) and the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) model (Su, 2002) are used to calculate evapotranspiration. Pang et al. (2007) developed evapotranspiration estimation models for vegetation coverage and for bare soil that are based on the SEBAL model. He et al. (2007) improved the parameters of the SEBS model and estimated surface energy ux from the topographical features of

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the Huang-Huai region. Ma et al. (2010) studied energy ux on a heterogeneous land surface. Xin and Liu (2010) used assumptions to simplify the two-source model. Zhang et al. (2003) proposed an evaporation model based on differential thermal inertia by which evaporation (latent heat ux) can be determined for bare soil based on only remotely sensed information. This work inspired new ideas for estimating evapotranspiration by remote sensing techniques, and integrating these methods with soil-vegetation-atmosphere models (Liu et al., 2007) is also progressing. The Heihe River Basin, the second largest inland river basin of China, is commonly used as a case study area for estimating evapotranspiration for a heterogeneous land surface in an arid region. Many studies have focused on evapotranspiration across the Heihe River Basin. Ma et al. (1997, 2004) implemented a parameterization scheme for regional energy ux on a heterogeneous land surface with Landsat TM data and then validated the scheme with observations from the Heihe River Basin Field Experiment (HEIFE). Guo (2003) estimated evapotranspiration over the Heihe River Basin by using NOAA/AVHRR data to retrieve the typical surface parameters based on PriestleyTaylor formula. Zhang et al. (2004) used the SEBAL model to deduce the spatial distributions of surface energy uxes including evapotranspiration from TM images over the Heihe River Basin. In addition, some researchers (Wu et al., 2007) investigated the receipt and expenditure of radiation by farmland in the Heihe River Basin based on the reference crop evapotranspiration method. In contrast, this paper studies and estimates evapotranspiration over the midstream of the Heihe River by the evaporative fraction method and veries the calculated parameters and model results by comparing the results with data from the Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (WATER) (Li et al., 2009b, 2011). 2. Data and method 2.1. Study area The middle section of the Heihe River is selected as the study area in this paper to estimate evapotranspiration by the remote sensing model. With an area about 128,000 km2 , the Heihe River Basin is the second largest inland river basin in northwestern China; it is located in the middle of the Hexi Corridor between 96 42 102 00 E and 37 41 42 42 N. The oasis is primarily surrounded by the Gobi desert, but the landscape includes heterogeneously distributed farmland, forest and residential areas inside and on the margins of the oasis. The climate is a typical temperate arid environment with low precipitation and high evaporation. 2.2. Data 2.2.1. NOAA/AVHRR data The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) has ve channels: one visible (VIS), one near-infrared (NIR), one infrared (IR) and two thermal infrared (TIR) channels. The temporal resolution is one day and the spatial resolution at nadir is 1.1 km. This paper uses NOAA/AVHRR data received by the Gausu Provincial Meteorological Bureau on May 5, June 3, August 2 and 25, and September 30, 2008. The overpasses time of satellite NOAA-18 is between 14:00 pm and 16:00 pm local time. Polar Orbit Meteorological Satellite Receiving and Processing System software, which was developed by the National Satellite Meteorological Center of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), was used to process the received real-time data. After geometric and atmospheric corrections and other preprocessing such as data format conversion, the data were then

been input into the Environment for Visualizing Images (ENVI) software (http://www.ittvis.com/ProductServices/ENVI.aspx) for further analysis. 2.2.2. Meteorological data Estimating instantaneous evapotranspiration from the NOAA/AVHRR data requires several types of data, including air temperature, air pressure, water vapor pressure (for the incoming long-wave radiation and short wave transmissivity). These data were obtained from the nine meteorological stations of Gansu Provincial Meteorological Bureau. The air temperature observations were interpolated into gridded data with a resolution of 1.1 km, by considering the correlations with latitude, longitude and altitude. The cross-validation results showed that the interpolation error of temperature derived from the spatial distribution model is less than 0.7 C in terms of the absolute error. The spatial interpolation of air pressure was also performed by establishing a correlation equation between air pressure and altitude. The absolute error is less than 10 Hpa. The water vapor pressure was interpolated using Kriging. Observation data including surface albedo, land surface temperature (LST), net radiation, atmospheric long-wave radiation and eddy correlations were collected at two sites from the WATER experiment in 2008 (Fig. 1) for validation of the model. One is the Yingke site and the other is the Huazhaizi site. The landscapes in these two sites are farmland and desert steppe, respectively. Details of these sites can be found in Li et al. (2009b, 2011). 2.2.3. Other data DEM data and the land use map of the Heihe River Basin were obtained from the Environmental and Ecological Science Data in western China (http://westdc.westgis.ac.cn). 2.3. Evaporative fraction model The evaporative fraction is dened as follows: = E E = Rn G0 E+H (1) equation,

According to the surface energy balance E = Rn G0 H, E can be expressed as follows: E= (Rn G0 )

(2)

where E is the latent heat ux (W m2 ), Rn is the net radiation ux (net short and net long-wave) (W m2 ), G0 is the soil heat ux (W m2 ) and H is the sensible heat ux (W m2 ). Latent heat ux can be calculated from the net radiation, soil heat ux and evaporative fraction. Therefore, evapotranspiration can be assessed from remote sensing image by estimating the evaporative fraction, net surface radiation and the soil heat ux. 2.3.1. Determining the net radiation Net radiation is determined by: Rn = (1 0 )K +0 L 0
4 LST0

(3)

where Rn is net radiation (W m2 ), 0 is surface albedo (), K is incoming short wave radiation (W m2 ), L is incoming longwave radiation (W m2 ), 0 is surface emissivity (), is the StefanBoltzmann constant as 5.67 108 W m2 K4 and LST0 is land surface temperature (K). The estimation of these parameters is detailed below.

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Fig. 1. Observation sites in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin.

2.3.2. Solar short wave radiation The instantaneous daily incoming short wave solar radiation on a surface for clear sky conditions is expressed as: K = I0 E0 cos( ) (4)

sensor. Guo (2003) and Song and Gao (1999) introduced the following formula to calculate the surface albedo: 0 = 0.545 vis + 0.32
nir

+ 0.035

(5)

where I0 is the instantaneous extraterrestrial solar radiation (1367 W m2 ) (Iqbal, 1983), E0 is an eccentricity correction factor (Iqbal, 1983), is solar zenith angle (Wu et al., 1995), and is the transmittance in the short wave broadband range () (Iqbal, 1983).

where vis and nir are the visible and near-infrared reectance from NOAA/AVHRR data, respectively. 2.3.4. Incoming long-wave radiation The approach implemented here estimates instantaneous incoming long-wave radiation by the method described by Iziomon et al. (2003): L = 1 a exp b e0 Tair
4 Tair

2.3.3. Surface albedo The broadband albedo is calculated from a simple linear combination of data from channels one (red) and two (NIR) of the AVHRR

(6)

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where a = 0.35, b = 10.0 Kh Pa1 , is the StefanBoltzmann constant and Tair is the air temperature (K). 2.3.5. Outgoing long-wave radiation The StefanBoltzmann law is used to calculate the long-wave radiation from land surface: L0 = 0
4 LST0

(7)

2.3.6. Surface emissivity Surface emissivity is estimated by the method of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) threshold, which is described by Sobrino and Raissouni (2000). 2.3.7. Land Surface temperature Land surface temperature is extracted from the brightness temperatures recorded by channels four and ve of the NOAA/AVHRR instrument using the split window technique described by Ulivieri et al. (1994): LST0 = 2.8T4 1.8T5 + 48(1 0 ) 75 (8) 3.1.1. Evaluation of surface albedo Table 1 compares the observed surface albedo at the Yingke and Huazhaizi evaluation sites with the surface albedo calculated by Eq. (5). With the exception of the surface albedo at the Yingke oasis on June 3, 2008, the maximum absolute error is 0.037, and the minimum absolute error is 0.009. These results suggest that the method for estimating the surface albedo has small errors. 3.1.2. Evaluation of outgoing long-wave radiation Table 2 compares the observed outgoing long-wave radiation at the Yingke and Huazhaizi sites to the outgoing long-wave radiation calculated by Eq. (7). The maximum absolute error of the outgoing long-wave radiation is 39.2 W m2 (relative error of 7.9%), and the minimum absolute error is only 1.3 W m2 (relative error of 0.38%). Therefore, the methods used to estimate land surface temperature and outgoing long-wave radiation show effective. 3.1.3. Evaluation of incoming long-wave radiation Table 3 compares the observed incoming long-wave radiation at Yingke and Huazhaizi to the incoming long-wave radiation calculated from Eq. (6). As shown in this table, the maximum absolute error between the observed and calculated values is 16.2 W m2 (at Yingke), and the corresponding relative error is 5.2%; the minimum absolute error is 4.1 W m2 (at Huazhaizi), and the corresponding relative error is only 1.2%. Therefore, the calculated results for incoming long-wave radiation show a high accuracy for both farmland and grassland sites. 3.1.4. Evaluation of net radiation Table 4 compares the observed net surface radiation at Yingke and Huazhaizi to the estimated net surface radiation from Eq. (3). The maximum absolute error is 87 W m2 at Yingke on June 3, 2008, and its relative error is 14.1%. Based on the results in Tables 1 and 2, errors in the estimated surface albedo and outgoing long-wave radiation lead to erroneous net radiation values for that day because reected radiation and outgoing long-wave radiation are used to estimate net radiation. At Yingke, the relative errors are less than 10% on August 2 and September 30. At Huazhaizi, the relative error in net radiation is 12.1% (absolute error of 42.6 W m2 ) on June 3, 2008. Previous results suggest that this error may have been due to errors in the estimated outgoing long-wave radiation and incoming long-wave radiation. On August 25, 2008, the relative error in the net radiation of 11.2% may have
Fig. 2. The scatter plot of NDVI and evapotranspiration at the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin on June 3, 2008.

3. Evaluation 3.1. Evaluation of surface physical parameters

where T4 and T5 are the brightness temperatures in channels four and ve, respectively. is the difference between the surface emissivity in channel four and the surface emissivity in channel ve. 2.3.8. Determination of soil heat ux Bastiaanssen et al. (1998a) utilizes a proportionality factor that describes conductive heat transfer in the soil using LST0 , albedo (0 ) and an extinction factor that describes the reection of radiation through vegetation canopies based on NDVI according to the following formula: G0 = Rn LST0 273.15 2 2 (0.0032C1 0 + 0.0062C1 0 )(1 0 (9)

0.978NDVI 4 )

where C1 is a conversion factor to obtain the daily average surface albedo from instantaneous values (default = 1.1) (). 2.3.9. Determination of the evaporative fraction The major assumption in the NOAA/AVHRR data set is that the evaporative fraction remains constant for all overpass times associated with a daily satellite image (Crago, 1996; Franks and Beven, 1997). This assumption holds for environmental conditions under which soil moisture does not change signicantly. Changes in weather conditions or cloud cover and surface discontinuities can induce signicant variability of the evaporative fraction. A simple method to approximate the evaporative fraction is to combine albedo with land surface temperature as described by Su and Menenti (1999), Su et al. (1999), Roerink et al. (2000) and Verstraeten et al. (2005). = LSTH LST0 E H 0 + bH LST0 LSTH LST E E+H (H E )0 + (bH b (10)

E)

where LSTH is the land surface temperature for dry pixels (K); LST E is the land surface temperature for wet pixels (K); H and E are the slopes of the high and low surface temperature, respectively, which are functions of surface albedo (K); bH and b E are the intercepts of the high and low temperature, respectively, which are functions of surface albedo (K). By tting the linear equations for the upper and lower boundaries of LST0 0 , the slope and intercept of Eq. (10) can be obtained.

X. Li et al. / International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 17 (2012) 8593 Table 1 Comparison between the measurements and the calculated results of land surface albedo. Date May 5 June 3 August 2 August 25 September 30 Observation sites Huazhaizi Yingke Huazhaizi Yingke Huazhaizi Yingke Huazhaizi Yingke Huazhaizi Yingke Measured value 0.219 0.274 0.109 0.249 0.148 0.265 0.166 0.147 Calculated value 0.229 0.265 0.188 0.239 0.128 0.228 0.174 0.157 Absolute error 0.010 0.009 0.078 0.010 0.021 0.037 0.008 0.010

89

Relative error (%) 4.6 3.3 71.5 4.0 14.2 14.0 4.8 6.8

Table 2 Comparison between the measurements and the calculated results of outgoing long-wave radiation. Date Yingke Measured value (W m2 ) May 5 June 3 August 2 August 25 September 30 N/A 495.7 466.3 474.0 Calculated value (W m2 ) 465.5 535.0 477.6 454.8 Absolute error (W m2 ) 39.2 11.3 19.2 Relative error (%) 7.9 2.4 4.1 Huazhaizi Measured value (W m2 ) 613.5 550.5 573.2 460.1 Calculated value (W m2 ) 595.6 544.0 564.2 461.4 Absolute error (W m2 ) 17.9 6.5 9.0 1.3 Relative error (%) 2.9 1.2 1.6 0.4

Table 3 Comparison between the measurements and the calculated results of incoming long-wave radiation. Date Yingke Measured value (W m2 ) June 3 August 2 August 25 September 30 351.4 353.2 311.1 Calculated value (W m2 ) 346.4 364.0 327.3 Absolute error (W m2 ) 5.0 10.8 16.2 Relative error (%) 1.4 3.1 5.2 Huazhaizi Measured value (W m2 ) 332.5 339.8 346.3 313.5 Calculated value (W m2 ) 336.6 352.4 336.2 318.3 Absolute error (W m2 ) 4.1 12.6 10.1 4.8 Relative error (%) 1.2 3.7 2.9 1.5

been due to errors in estimated surface albedo. The relative error is less than 10% on the other two days. The evaluation of retrieval results of the surface parameters demonstrates that errors in the estimated physical surface parameters are small in the evaporative fraction model. The results therefore reasonably reect the characteristics of the regional energy balance and the distribution of biophysical parameters. 3.2. Evaluation of evapotranspiration The observed evapotranspiration at Yingke is compared to the estimated evapotranspiration by evaporative fraction model and displayed here (Table 5). The maximum relative error between June and August, when vegetative cover is high, ranges from 1% to 13.2%. Because the evapotranspiration estimation model involves many parameters, errors in each estimated parameter can affect the nal evapotranspiration result. For August 2, errors in the estimated values for surface albedo, land surface temperature (LST), outgoing long-wave radiation and incoming long-wave radiation were relatively small; thus, the error in the estimated evapotranspiration
Table 4 Comparison between the measurements and the calculated results of net radiation. Date Yingke Measured value (W m2 ) June 3 August 2 August 25 September 30 617.2 659.2 438.5 Calculated value (W m2 ) 530.0 646.0 473.0 Absolute error (W m2 ) 87.2 13.2 34.5

was also small. Therefore, the best evapotranspiration results can be achieved by applying the best possible methods to obtain each parameter in the evaporative fraction model. More accurate estimated parameters yield more accurate estimates of evapotranspiration. In early May and late September, estimates of evapotranspiration tend to have larger errors due to sparse vegetation or a lack of contrast between vegetative coverage inside and outside of the oasis. In this case, the evapotranspiration model is less able to produce meaningful results. 4. Results and analysis 4.1. Spatial variation of evapotranspiration in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin A comparison of the calculated results of evapotranspiration with the NDVI indicates a strong relationship over the study area. Fig. 2 is a scatter plot of NDVI and latent heat ux at the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin on June 3, 2008, showing almost a

Huazhaizi Relative error (%) 14.1 2.0 7.8 Measured value (W m2 ) 351.4 480.0 398.5 458.7 Calculated value (W m2 ) 394.0 498.0 443.0 451.6 Absolute error (W m2 ) 42.6 18.0 44.5 7.1 Relative error (%) 12.1 3.8 11.2 1.5

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Fig. 3. Distribution of latent heat ux over central Heihe River Basin in 2008 (a, May 5; b, June 3; c, August 2; d, September 30).

X. Li et al. / International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 17 (2012) 8593 Table 5 Comparison between the measurements and the calculated results of latent heat ux at Yingke. Date May 5 June 3 August 2 August 25 September 30 Measured value (W m2 ) 158.6 372.8 437.0 523.9 150.8 Calculated value (W m2 ) 209.0 323.0 485.0 519.0 265.0 Absolute error (W m2 ) 50.4 49.8 48.0 4.9 114.2

91

Relative error (%) 31.8 13.3 11.0 0.9 75.7

linear positive correlation between NDVI and evapotranspiration. But it is also clear that at low NDVI values there are a lot of outliers. On May 5, 2008 (Fig. 3a), the maximum value of latent heat ux (300350 W m2 ) occurs in parts of Gaotai, which is located on the bank of the Heihe River bank and scattered across some areas of Jiuquan oasis. The next highest values, 200300 W m2 , are found in Zhangye, Linze, Gaotai, most part of the Jiuquan oasis and on the banks of the Heihe River. Evapotranspiration values in the Gobi desert are obviously low, typically less than 50 W m2 . Areas along the moisture river banks with more vegetation coverage get more evapotranspiration than other regions. In many articial oases of the middle reaches of the Heihe River in early May, spring wheat is just in the tiller or jointing stage and spring corn is in the trefoil stage. Because the vegetation index is relatively low at this point, there is no pronounced difference in evapotranspiration between the oases and the surrounding desert areas. On June 3, 2008 (Fig. 3b), the maximum value of latent heat ux is seen within the oases at Zhangye, Linze, Gaotai and Jiuquan, where it reaches from 450 to 500 W m2 ; the latent heat ux and NDVI in most other parts of the oases are between 350 and 450 W m2 and between 0.3 and 0.4, respectively. At the edge of the oases, where vegetation is sparse, the latent heat ux ranges from about 350400 W m2 . The NDVI of the Jinta oasis is less than 0.2, and its latent heat ux is also smaller (200300 W m2 ). In the Gobi desert, just outside the oases, the latent heat ux is below 150 W m2 . Because almost no plants grow in the desert, the latent heat ux sharply decreases to a dozen W m2 in some places. With vegetation growth in August, the maximum value of latent heat ux (500550 W m2 ) occurs on August 2, 2008 at the Zhangye oasis and Linze oasis, which lies on the Heihe River banks (Fig. 3c). In Gaotai, Linze and the northern part of the Zhangye, the latent heat ux is between 400 and 500 W m2 . The latent heat ux is 350400 W m2 across most of the Jiuquan oasis and is about 200400 W m2 in Jinta oasis and NDVI is about 0.10.4; these values indicate that the landscape within the Jinta oasis is heterogeneous and that the vegetation distribution varies greatly. However, the latent heat ux in the Gobi desert area varies much less in August than in June. On September 30, 2008 (Fig. 3d), the green of the NDVI image rapidly declines, which corresponds to crop maturity and harvest. The maximum value of latent heat ux is again found in Zhangye oasis with a value between 300 and 350 W m2 . In this oasis, the large value of the NDVI (0.30.4) indicates that some plants are still growing. Higher values of the latent heat ux are also scattered across some areas of Linze, Gaotai and Jiuquan at this time, but the latent heat ux in most parts of the oases drops to between 250 and 300 W m2 from more than 350 W m2 in August. In the Gobi desert, which has little vegetation, evapotranspiration remains at a steady low level.

is sparse. With the exception of a few places near the oases that have slightly more evapotranspiration, the latent heat ux is typically less than 10 W m2 in some places. This condition is the result of the surface energy balancing process, in which sensible heat ux and soil heat ux are major parameters, whereas latent heat ux has minimal inuence. Evapotranspiration variation in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin is closely related to crop growth. In early May, when spring wheat is in the tiller or jointing stage and corn is in the trefoil stage, the ground has limited vegetation cover, and evapotranspiration values are similar for the oasis and the surrounding desert. On August 2, when spring wheat, maize and other crops are experiencing vigorous growth, oasis evapotranspiration increases to a maximum value. Harvesting at the end of September causes oasis evapotranspiration to become lower than that in August. Both river banks are distinguished from the surrounding desert by their relatively moist conditions and high evapotranspiration values on all of the studied dates. Changes in the evapotranspiration in desert areas are consistently small. Evapotranspiration variations in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin are closely related to crop growth and it has a strong relationship with the NDVI. This suggests that according to the characteristics of spatial and temporal variation of evapotranspiration, rational utilization of water resources in the oasis is essential to manage the water resources in the inland river basin. 5. Discussion Estimated evapotranspiration values are evaluated by comparison to surface ux observations from WATER. During months with greater vegetative cover (June, July and August), the relative error in the results of the evaporative fraction model ranges from 13.2% to as little as 1%. For a pixel range of 1.1 km, this result is acceptable. However, when vegetation cover in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin is sparse (May and September), the evapotranspiration estimation error is relatively large, which indicates that the method is not effective for the condition with less vegetative coverage. Changes in the evaporative fraction at Yingke are evaluated based on data from May 5, September 30, June 3 and August 2 and 25, 2008 (Fig. 4). In the early stage of crop growth (May 5) when

4.2. Temporal variation of evapotranspiration in the central Heihe River Based on the distribution of evapotranspiration values on May 5, June 3, August 2 and September 30, during all of these months evapotranspiration is very low in the Gobi desert, where vegetation

Fig. 4. Daily variations of the evaporative fraction at Yingke site.

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vegetative coverage is low and the NDVI is 0.06, the change in the evaporative fraction is obvious. In the late stage of crop growth (September 30), the NDVI is 0.21, and the evaporative fraction also changes clearly during the day. During the vigorous growth stage (June 3, August 2 and 25), the NDVI is above 0.30, and the evaporative fraction changes little during the day. Therefore, changes in the evaporative fraction likely contribute to the errors in estimated evapotranspiration. In addition, satellite passing time and observation time are not completely consistent, which generates the difference between the observed and estimated values. For instance, on May 5, at the satellite passing time of 15:40 (local time), the estimated latent heat ux was 209 W m2 ; the latent heat ux values observed on the ground were 203.3 W m2 at 15:15 and 158.6 W m2 at 15:45. On September 30, at the satellite passing time of 15:00, the estimated latent heat ux was 265 W m2 ; observed latent heat ux values were 150.9 W m2 at 15:15 and 167.7 W m2 at 15:45. Therefore, the evaporative fraction changes during the early and late crop growth stages, and the time associated with satellite and ground-based measurements are not completely consistent. These factors contribute greatly to the large estimation errors on May 5 and September 30. Two major error sources should be discussed here. One is the error related with the temporal scale. The estimated evapotranspiration extracted from remote sensing data is an instantaneous value, while the evapotranspiration measured by the Eddy Covariance system (EC) is generally a mean value within a certain average period (normally 30 min). Therefore, the difference in the temporal scale might make some contribution to the errors between the estimated and measured evapotranspiration. The other is the error related with the spatial scale. EC at the Yingke station is set up at 28 m high to observe evapotranspiration of cropland. Its footprint is about 250 m of radius in circle range according to the study of Shang et al. (2009). When comparing the latent heat ux value measured by EC with the estimated value from NOAA/AVHRR data with 1.1 km resolution, the difference in spatial scale may bring errors (Song, 2011). However, how to take account the scale issue into validation is a very challenge issue and it needs further investigation. It believes that higher spatial resolution remote sensing data can play an important role in solving this problem. The model is also sensitive to the errors in the input parameters, to quantify these errors is also of great importance. To incorporate the remote sensing model of evapotranspiration into a land data assimilation system for better estimation of ET and quantication related errors will be our future research priority.

points apart from the linear correlation line are distributed near the river. They have little vegetation cover, with NDVI value <0.02, but have slightly high latent heat ux due to higher soil moisture along the river side. Therefore, different soil moisture conditions at locations with similar low vegetation cover inuences the relationship between latent heat ux and NDVI. Other places with low NDVI and relatively higher latent heat ux are located around the cloud cover area. Subpixel cloud generally has low NDVI and affects the estimation of evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration change in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin is closely related to crop growth. The distribution map for August 2 shows maximum evaporation values throughout the oases. During the harvest at the end of September, oasis evapotranspiration is notably lower than in August. Evapotranspiration values for the oases, where the distribution of vegetation is highly variable, are relatively heterogeneous. The two banks of the river are distinguished from the surrounding desert by their higher moisture level and resulting higher evapotranspiration. Few plants grow in the desert, and evapotranspiration is consistently low. With the exception of a few places near the oases that have slightly higher evapotranspiration, the evapotranspiration is generally less than 10 W m2 in these areas, suggesting that the latent heat ux does not make a signicant contribution to the surface energy balance in desert area. The accuracy of the collected data used in the evapotranspiration estimation model directly affects the accuracy of the estimated evapotranspiration. The model involves many parameters, and errors in each parameter can affect the calculated results. Because the data for August 2 have relatively low errors, the estimated evapotranspiration is also relatively better. Therefore, to achieve the best evapotranspiration result, the best available methods must be used to estimate every parameter involved in the evaporative fraction model. Acknowledgements This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 40871190 and 40925004, the National Key Technologies R&D program of China under Grant No. 2009AA12Z1463 and the Research Fund of State Key Lab of Resources and Environmental Information System. Data used in the paper were obtained from Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (WATER), which is jointly supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Action Plan for West Development Program (grant KZCX2-XB2-09) and the Chinese State Key Basic Research Project (grant 2007CB714400). We would like to sincerely thank the scientists and students in WATER who carried out the eld measurements. Mr. Youhua Ran kindly prepared Fig. 1 in the paper. We thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their very suggestive comments. References
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6. Conclusion This paper uses the remote sensing data and WATER observations to estimate the evapotranspiration over the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin based on the evaporative fraction method. The evaluation of the obtained parameters and modeling results suggest that the method produces only small errors and is able to achieve the goals of a good ET estimation. When estimating regional evapotranspiration from the evaporative fraction, vegetative growth conditions must be considered. Good results can be obtained only if the evaporative fraction remains constant during the day. Generally, during peak crop growth (June to August), the evaporative fraction model can yield accurate results for evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration and NDVI distribution are strongly correlated. The oases and river banks, which have higher NDVI, typically have greater evapotranspiration, whereas areas with sparse or no vegetation coverage normally have very low evapotranspiration. There are also some exceptions in Fig. 2. We found that most of the

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