Regional Estimation of Reference Evapotranspiration in Arid and Semiarid Regions
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 10
Abstract
Evapotranspiration is critical to many applications including water resource management, irrigation scheduling, and environmental studies. Many models based on meteorological data have already been developed to estimate reference evapotranspiration in various climatic and geographical conditions. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the performances of the Makkink, Priestley-Taylor, and Hargreaves models versus the Penman-Monteith FAO-56 (PMF-56) method in arid and semiarid regions of Iran during 1993–2005 and to identify the alternative model that presents results closest to the PMF-56 method. Additionally, a regional estimation of monthly with the best-performed model is presented by using the spatially distributed physical parameters and geographical information system. The results indicated that the Hargreaves model was the best model to estimate in eastern arid and semiarid regions of Iran. The spatial distribution maps of showed that values increased from north to south as the aridity increased in the study area. The estimated total monthly revealed a significant variation during the growing seasons (April–September) so that the study region experienced the highest and lowest values of 250 and 80 mm in July and April, respectively.
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Acknowledgments
The writers wish to thank the Islamic Republic of Iran Meteorological Organization (IRIMO) for providing the requisite meteorological data. The first writer expresses his gratitude to the Bu-Ali Sina University for the research grant during the study. Special thanks go to many meteorological observers from IRIMO who measured the weather data during the period of study.
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Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 10 • October 2010
Pages: 724 - 731
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 7, 2009
Accepted: Mar 8, 2010
Published online: Sep 15, 2010
Published in print: Oct 2010
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