SHEET 2: EVAPOTRANSPIRATION

Dr. P. K. Mishra

2.1 What is Evapotranspiration?

The second major parameter in the water cycle is evapotranspiration. Small error can result in
different conclusions. Evapotranspiration is the process by which water is transferred from the
land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and other surfaces and by transpiration
from plants. It is the sum of evaporation and plant transpiration from the Earth's land and ocean
surface to the atmosphere.

Figure 1: ET.

The ‘Sheet 2’ provides the evapotranspiration component under Water Accounting Plus
(WA+).

2.2 Purpose of Sheet 2

Quantify water consumption of all land use classes

Describing the anthropogenic impact on ET and concepts of ET management to reduce
incremental ET from withdrawals and inundations
Understand impact of land use planning on consumptive use (and indirectly stream flow)
 Relate water consumption to intended processes (beneficial vs. non-beneficial ET &
agriculture/ environment/ economy/ energy/ leisure)
2.3 What we get from Sheet 2?
 Total evapotranspiration (ET) Important glossary:
o Non-manageable – Protected LU
 Conventional ET which
o Manageable – Utilized LU
o Managed – Modified LU + is the ET that occurs
Managed LU through natural processes
Conventional  Non–conventional ET
Non-conventional which is the ET that
 Total Beneficial occurs by non–natural
 Agriculture processes such as steam
 Environment from cooling towers,
 Economy green houses, respiration
 Energy by humans and animals,
 Leisure sweating and turbine
 Total Non-beneficial
spray, among others
 Beneficial ET which is
 Total transpiration (T)
o Non-manageable – Protected LU the water consumed for
o Manageable – Utilized LU its intended purpose
o Managed – Modified LU + Managed LU  Non-Beneficial ET which
 Total evaporation (E) = Total ET – Total T is the water consumed for
o Water purposes other than the
o Soil intended ones
o Interception
 Figure 2: Sheet 2.

2.4 How to generate Sheet 2

Sheet 2 (Evapotranspiration, km3/ year) presents information regarding water consumption in

a basin as a total value and per water sector (land use type). Major inputs for the generation of
Water Accounting sheet 2 are RS-based evapotranspiration maps (ET), Leaf Area Index (LAI),
Net primary production (NPP), Gross primary production (GPP), daily precipitation and a
LULC map. The procedure involves separation of evapotranspiration to evaporation,
transpiration and interception (Fig.3) and then splitting evapotranspiration into beneficial and
non-beneficial components. A generalized flow diagram is given in Fig.5 which was followed
for generation of Water Accounting sheet 2.

Figure 3: E, T, and I separation.

2.5 Input data for Sheet 2

i. Evapotranspiration, ET [wa.Products.ETens.monthly( )]
ii. Precipitation, P [wa.Collect.CHIRPS.daily; wa.Collect.CHIRPS.monthly]
iii. Leaf area index, LAI [wa.Collect.MOD15.LAI_8daily]
iv. NPP [wa.Collect.MOD17.NPP_yearly]
v. GPP [wa.Collect.MOD17.GPP_8daily]
vi. Land use map (from WALU)
Note: The downloaded dataset is of different spatial and temporal resolution, and hence needed
to be kept uniform in resolution. Here, the spatial resolution is kept similar to LULC and
temporal resolution is kept monthly.
2.5.1 Pre-processing of Input data for Sheet 2

Data Temporal resolution Pre-processing Final data

Evapotranspiration monthly - ‘et’ - monthly
Precipitation monthly - ‘p’ - monthly
LAI 8-daily wa.Functions.Start.Eightdaily_to_monthly_state.Nearest_Interpolate( ) ‘lai’ - monthly

GPP 8-daily -do- ‘gpp’ - monthly

NPP yearly - ‘npp’ - monthly
Rainy_days$ daily wa.Functions.Two.Rainy_Days.Calc_Rainy_Days( ) ‘n’ - monthly
NDM# monthly wa.Functions.Two.Calc_NDM.NPP_GPP_Based( ) ‘ndm’ - monthly
$, # Rainy days generated from Precipitation; NDM is generated from GPP and NPP using Yearly_NPP * monthly_GPP / Yearly_GPP

More on input data:

(i) What are the other ET products used to derive ETensemble?
ETensemble is a merged ET product based on 7 different ET layers viz. ALEXI, CMRSET, MOD16, SEBS, SSEBop, ETmonitor,
GLEAM. The ET is downscaled by using the NDVI from MODIS resulting in a 0.0025 degrees product.

(ii) How is NDM generated from NPP and GPP?

 
2.6 Concept behind separation of E, T, I – C:\Anaconda2\Lib\site-packages\wa\Functions\Two
or F:\WA_PKM\WA_Hyperloop\sheet2_functions. splitET_ITE ( )

Let’s start by identifying which variables affect Interception. There are two factors which affect
the Interception loss due to vegetation. Those are:
1) Vegetation cover
2) Precipitation intensity and dynamics (how much, how fast)
We can calculate vegetation cover using an empirical equation based on a vegetation index,
e.g. LAI.

. ∗
𝑉𝑒𝑔_𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 , 1 𝑒 , ....(1)
Where,
i = landuse type
t = time
Now, the following equation relates LAI, P, vegetation cover and rainfall dynamics to
Interception as follows:

𝐼, 𝐿𝐴𝐼 , ∗ 1 ,
∗ 𝑛 ....(2)
∗ _ , ∗
,

What does Transpiration depend on? It is mainly the Plants growth (Net Primary Production).
A simple empirical equation for Transpiration, which assumes 5% minimum Evaporation:
,
𝑇, 𝑚𝑖𝑛 0.95 ∗ 𝐸𝑇 , 𝐼 , , 0.95 ∗ ∗ 𝐸𝑇 , 𝐼 , , ....(3)
. ∗ _

(T = np.minimum((NDM * NDMMAX),np.ones(np.shape(NDM)) * 0.95) * (ET - I)

where NDMMAX = 0.95 / NDMmax[date.month]; NDMMAX = 1.00 / ndm_max_fhs[date.month])

Finally, knowing Interception and Transpiration, we can derive Evaporation by subtracting

interception and transpiration from ET as follows:

𝐸, 𝐸𝑇 , 𝐼, 𝑇 , ....(4)

It is also interesting to look at the relative importance of each component (I, T, E) per land use.
Eg. a forest land cover will have higher transpiration, and interception. Once E, T, and I
separation is done, the segration for beneficial and non-beneficial ET for different land use
categories is based on a dictionary as shown below:
 Monthly rainy days (n) calculated from daily precipitation data (P)
Downscaling of NPP to monthly NPP based on GPP
Calculation of monthly Net Dry Matter (NDM) from NPP

Calculation of Vegetation Cover (Veg_Cover) based on LAI

Calculation of Interception (I) using the following relation

Calculation of Transpiration using the following relation

Calculation of E as a residual

Separation of ET into beneficial and non-beneficial ET based

on estimated E, T, I, landuse classes and empirical relations.

Generation of Water Accounting Sheet 2

Figure 5: A generalized flow chart for generation of Water Accounting sheet 2.