Year 2016, Volume 1, Issue 3

Year : 2016
Volume : 1
Issue : 3
   
Authors : Claire SIMONIS, Bernard TYCHON, Françoise GELLENS-MEULENBERGHS
Title : SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF AQUACROP EVAPOTRANSPIRATION TO WEATHER STATION DISTANCE
Abstract : Water balance calculation is essential for reliable agricultural management, and the actual evapotranspiration (ET) is the most complicated balance term to estimate. In agriculture, the most common method used is based on Penman-Monteith reference evaporation is determined from weather conditions for an unstressed grass cover, further multiplied by crop specific and soil water availability coefficients to obtain the actual evapotranspiration. This approach is also used in the AquaCrop model. This model has proven to be accurate when all weather data are locally available. However, in many cases, weather data can’t be collected on the site due to the limited number of stations and the vast region covered by each of them. Instead, data are often collected at many kilometers from the study site. The question we want to study is: how does evapotranspiration accuracy evolves with respect to weather station distance? A winter wheat plot in Lonzée (Belgium) was studied during the 2014-2015 agricultural seasons. Actual evapotranspiration was simulated with AquaCrop thanks to the weather data collected at 3 different distances from the study site: on the site (data collected by a fluxnet station), 20 km, 50 km and 70km from the site. The non-on-site weather data were derived from spatially interpolated 10 km grid data. These results were then compared to the fluxnet station evapotranspiration measurements to assess the impact of the weather station distance. Substantial differences, which were found between the four cases, evoking the importance of assimilating satellite derived ET products (e.g. MSG) into AquaCrop.
For citation : Simonis, C., Tychon, B., Gellens-Meulenberghs, F. (2016). Sensitivity analysis of aquacrop evapotranspiration to weather station distance. AGROFOR International Journal, Volume 1. Issue No. 3. pp. 148-153. DOI:10.7251/AGRENG1603148S
Keywords : agrometeorology, evapotranspiration, AquaCrop, weather data
   
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