Combining meteorological and lysimeter data to evaluate energy and water fluxes over a row crop for remote sensing applications

Evapotranspiration is an essential component for the assessment of water dynamic in agriculture and the estimation of water demand by crops. Its estimation becomes more difficult over row crops due to differences between canopy and inter-row space. In this work, lysimeter data was combined and integrated with radiative and meteorological data to evaluate energy and water fluxes over a raspberry crop during a summer month. These measurements allowed to determine differences in the water fluxes between vegetation and bare soil of the inter-row. It was determined that 15% of the precipitation was intercepted by vegetation, and 29% of the monthly precipitation could be attributed to dew. The pattern of evaporation was affected by the shadow of crops, thus the peak of evaporation occurs after direct sun irradiance reaches the lysimeter and therefore the evaporation tend to decrease. Combined radiative and mass balance instrumentation can be a useful tool to validate the partitioning of evapotranspiration over row crops.