TY - JOUR
T1 - Estimation of Potential Evapotranspiration across Sri Lanka Using a Distributed Dual-Source Evapotranspiration Model under Data Scarcity
AU - Senatilleke, Udara
AU - Abeysiriwardana, Himasha
AU - Makubura, Randika K.
AU - Anwar, Faisal
AU - Rathnayake, Upaka
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Udara Senatilleke et al.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Evapotranspiration estimations are not common in developing countries though most of them have water scarcities for agricultural purposes. Therefore, it is essential to estimate the rates of evapotranspiration based on the available climatic parameters. Proper estimations of evapotranspiration are unavailable to Sri Lanka, even though the country has a significant agricultural contribution to its economy. Therefore, the Shuttleworth-Wallace (S-W) model, a process-based two-source potential evapotranspiration (PET) model, is implemented to simulate the spatiotemporal distribution of PET, evaporation from soil (ETs), and transpiration from vegetation canopy (ETc) across the total landmass of Sri Lanka. The country was divided into a grid with 6km×6km cells. The meteorological data, including rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, net solar radiation, and pan evaporation, for 14 meteorological stations were used in this analysis. They were interpolated using Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW), Universal kriging, and Thiessen polygon methods as appropriate so that the generated thematic layers were fairly closer to reality. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and soil moisture data were retrieved from publicly available online domains, while the threshold values of vegetation parameters were taken from the literature. Notwithstanding many approximations and uncertainties associated with the input data, the implemented model displayed an adequate ability to capture the spatiotemporal distribution of PET and its components. A comparison between predicted PET and recorded pan evaporations resulted in a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.75 mm/day. The model showed high sensitivity to Leaf Area Index (LAI). The model revealed that both spatial and temporal distribution of PET is highly correlated with the incoming solar radiation fluxes and affected by the rainfall seasons and cultivation patterns. The model predicted PET values accounted for 80-90% and 40-60% loss of annual mean rainfall, respectively, in the drier and wetter parts of the country. The model predicted a 0.65 ratio of annual transpiration to annual evapotranspiration.
AB - Evapotranspiration estimations are not common in developing countries though most of them have water scarcities for agricultural purposes. Therefore, it is essential to estimate the rates of evapotranspiration based on the available climatic parameters. Proper estimations of evapotranspiration are unavailable to Sri Lanka, even though the country has a significant agricultural contribution to its economy. Therefore, the Shuttleworth-Wallace (S-W) model, a process-based two-source potential evapotranspiration (PET) model, is implemented to simulate the spatiotemporal distribution of PET, evaporation from soil (ETs), and transpiration from vegetation canopy (ETc) across the total landmass of Sri Lanka. The country was divided into a grid with 6km×6km cells. The meteorological data, including rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, net solar radiation, and pan evaporation, for 14 meteorological stations were used in this analysis. They were interpolated using Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW), Universal kriging, and Thiessen polygon methods as appropriate so that the generated thematic layers were fairly closer to reality. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and soil moisture data were retrieved from publicly available online domains, while the threshold values of vegetation parameters were taken from the literature. Notwithstanding many approximations and uncertainties associated with the input data, the implemented model displayed an adequate ability to capture the spatiotemporal distribution of PET and its components. A comparison between predicted PET and recorded pan evaporations resulted in a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.75 mm/day. The model showed high sensitivity to Leaf Area Index (LAI). The model revealed that both spatial and temporal distribution of PET is highly correlated with the incoming solar radiation fluxes and affected by the rainfall seasons and cultivation patterns. The model predicted PET values accounted for 80-90% and 40-60% loss of annual mean rainfall, respectively, in the drier and wetter parts of the country. The model predicted a 0.65 ratio of annual transpiration to annual evapotranspiration.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85129685336&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1155/2022/6819539
DO - 10.1155/2022/6819539
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85129685336
SN - 1687-9309
VL - 2022
JO - Advances in Meteorology
JF - Advances in Meteorology
M1 - 6819539
ER -