HR: 17:15h
AN: H44B-05    [Abstracts]
TI: Land Cover and Evapotranspiration in the Middle Rio Grande Basin
AU: * Hendrickx, J M
EM: hendrick@nmt.edu
AF: New Mexico Tech, 801 LeRoy Place/MSEC 240, Socorro, NM 87801 United States
AU: Hearer, D M
EM: haeredm1@nmt.edu
AF: New Mexico Tech, 801 LeRoy Place/MSEC 240, Socorro, NM 87801 United States
AU: Hong, S
EM: hong@nmt.edu
AF: New Mexico Tech, 801 LeRoy Place/MSEC 240, Socorro, NM 87801 United States
AU: Borchers, B
EM: borchers@nmt.edu
AF: New Mexico Tech, 801 LeRoy Place/MSEC 240, Socorro, NM 87801 United States
AU: Neville, P
EM: pneville@edac.unm.edu
AF: University of New Mexico, MSC01 1110, Albuquerque, NM 87131 United States
AB: In regional hydrological studies it is not uncommon to make the assumption that land cover is directly related to evapotranspiration. This assumption then makes it possible to derive regional evapotranspiration estimates based on a land cover map. It is often the only feasible alternative for the establishment of an expensive region wide network of meteorological sensors. The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between land cover and actual evapotranspiration in the Middle Rio Grande Basin. We use a detailed land cover map of the area to identify the spatial distribution of different land cover classes. We already have used the New Mexico Tech implementation of the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL-NMT) for the generation of five evapotranspiration maps from Landsat images. These maps will be converted to maps of crop coefficients by dividing the evapotranspiration of each pixel by the weather-based reference evapotranspiration determined from measurements at a representative weather station. Next, we will evaluate the spatial and temporal distributions of the crop coefficients for each land cover class. Statistical analyses of these distributions will reveal for each land cover class whether the assumption of a direct relationship between land cover and evapotranspiration is true or false.
DE: 1818 Evapotranspiration
DE: 1855 Remote sensing (1640)
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005