Computation of Landsat Based Evapotranspiration Maps along the South Platte and North Platte Rivers

It is important to quantify the consumptive water use by the vegetation when managing regional water resources in irrigated areas. Suitable models and algorithms applied to high resolution (30 m) satellite imagery provide a cost effective and time efficient method to obtain evapotranspiration estimations from bare soil and vegetation. The METRIC image processing model calculates net radiation, soil heat flux and sensible heat flux through a number of steps before estimating evapotranspiration as the residual from the energy balance. Sensible heat flux algorithms are calibrated using an operator