EVAPOTRANSPIRATION

1. Evaporation is the process by which water is

transformed from the liquid phase to the vapor phase
2. Transpiration is the process by which water moves
through plants and evaporates through leaf stomata,
which are small openings in the leaves.

What happens in cases where the

ground surface is covered by
vegetation?

FACTS
Evapotranspiration does not contribute
significantly to the water budget over time
scales of individual storms, but over longer time
periods (weeks and months) this process is a
major component in the terrestrial water
budget
70% of the rainfall in the United States is
returned to the atmosphere via
evapotranspiration on an annual basis.

Predicting evapotranspiration is of primary

interest in the design of irrigation and
surface-water storage systems

Standard Evapotranspiration rates commonly used in practice

(1) Potential evapotranspiration, is used

synonymously with the term potential evaporation,
which is commonly defined as the quantity of water
evaporated per unit area, per unit time from an
idealized, extensive free water surface under existing
atmospheric conditions.

(2) Reference-crop evapotranspiration,

is defined as the rate of evaporation from an area
planted with a specific (reference) crop, where water
availability is not a limiting factor. Grass and alfalfa
are by far the most commonly used reference crops.
Grass -- short vegetation (8-15 cm tall), alfalfa -- tall
vegetation (> 50 cm tall).

Standard Evapotranspiration rates commonly used in practice

(3) Actual evapotranspiration, is defined as

the one that occurs under actual soil, ground cover,
and water-availability conditions.

Evaporation Pans
Direct measure of evaporation in the field.
They are used to estimate the reference-crop
evapotranspiration, ET, by multiplying panevaporation measurements by pan coefficients
(radiation, wind, temperature and humidity).

ET k p E p
kp is the pan coefficient , varies seasonally (0.35
-0.85) see table 5.47 Pan Coefficients for various
site conditions
Ep in the measured pan evaporation
The estimation of evapotranspiration using the
coefficients from table 5.47 is called FAO-24 pan
Typical standardized site with a U.S.
evaporation method.
Weather Bureau Class A Pan (4ft in
diameter, 10 in deep, galvanized iron)

Problem
Evaporation-pan measurements indicate the daily
evaporation depths over the course of one week during
the summer: 8.2mm, 7.5mm, 7.6mm, 6.8mm, 7.6mm,
8.9mm, and 8.5mm. During this period the average wind
speed is 1.9m/s and the average daily relative humidity is
70%. If the evaporation pan is installed in a green area
with an upstream fetch of up to 1km, determine the 7-day
average reference evapotranspiration.
The calculation procedure is as follows:
1. Find kp from given data and using Table 5.47.
2. Calculate the 7 day average pan evaporation rate, Ep
3. Calculate ET (7 day average grass-reference
evapotranspiration) using reference crop
evapotranspiration equation.