Estimating Evapotranspiration from an Improved Two-Source Energy Balance Model Using ASTER Satellite Imagery

Reliably estimating the turbulent fluxes of latent and sensible heat at the Earth’s surface by remote sensing is important for research on the terrestrial hydrological cycle. This paper presents a practical approach for mapping surface energy fluxes using Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) images from an improved two-source energy balance (TSEB) model. The original TSEB approach may overestimate latent heat flux under vegetative stress conditions, as has also been reported in recent research. We replaced the Priestley-Taylor equation used in the original TSEB model with one that uses plant moisture and temperature constraints based on the PT-JPL model to obtain a more accurate canopy latent heat flux for model solving. The collected ASTER data and field observations employed in this study are over corn fields in arid regions of the Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER) area, China. The results were validated by measurements from eddy covariance (EC) systems, and the surface energy flux estimates of the improved TSEB model are similar to the ground truth. A comparison of the results from the original and improved TSEB models indicates that the improved method more accurately estimates the sensible and latent heat fluxes, generating more precise daily evapotranspiration (ET) estimate under vegetative stress conditions.