Estimation of Landsat-like daily evapotranspiration for crop water consumption monitoring using TSEB model and data fusion

Evapotranspiration (ET) plays an essential role in agricultural water resource management. Understanding regional agricultural water consumption characteristics can be improved by predicting ET using remote sensing. However, due to the lack of high-resolution images on clear-sky days or the limitation of ET reconstruction on cloudy-sky days, it remains challenging to continuously derive ET at the field scale. In this study, the Landsat and MODIS data were initially fused to obtain the Landsat-like vegetation index and land surface temperature on clear-sky days. Then the two-source energy balance (TSEB) model was applied to calculate the daily ET during the clear-sky. A canopy resistance-based gap-filling method was involved in reconstructing regional ET on cloudy days while considering different environmental factors. The estimations were validated by automatic weather system data (AWS) and eddy covariance (EC) measurements in Guantao County. The results demonstrated that the proposed scheme performed well in estimating cropland ET, with an RMSE of 0.86 mm·d(−1) and an R(2) of 0.65, and the NSE and PBias were 0.61 and -0.29%, respectively. The crop water consumption analysis revealed that the daily ET of winter wheat peaked during the maturation stage. Nevertheless, summer maize water consumption peaked in the middle of the growing season in this area. The temperature during the early development stage and the soil moisture in the mid and late growth stages had the greatest impact on the ET of winter wheat. During the entire growing period, soil moisture had the largest effect on the ET of summer maize. The findings showed that the TSEB model can be effectively applied to field-scale water consumption monitoring in North China through MODIS and Landsat data fusion and ET temporal reconstruction considering environmental factors.