Comparison of the Performance of ALARM and SEBAL in Estimating the Actual Daily ET from Satellite Data
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 144, Issue 9
Abstract
The Analytical Land Atmosphere Radiometer Model (ALARM) has been tested in several countries with observed evapotranspiration (ET) obtained from different ground-based methods, but none from a lysimeter, which is considered the most accurate ground-based method of measuring ET. The first objective of this work was to test ALARM against lysimeter ET data. The second objective was to compare the performance of ALARM with Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL), the most widely used model for estimating ET from remotely sensed data. An experiment was conducted on a 1.5 ha potato field in the Jordan Valley that has a weighing lysimeter located midfield. Potatoes were planted on the January 14, 2016, and harvested on the May 10, 2016. Three images from Landsat 8 were used to compute ALARM and SEBAL ET. The measured daily ET of the potatoes ranged from on March 22 to on April 23. ALARM underestimated the daily measured ET by 8% on March 22, 16% on April 7 and 33% on April 23 while SEBAL underestimated the daily measured ET by 4% on March 22, 15% on April 7 and 37% on April 23. Some modifications were made to improve the accuracy of ALARM and SEBAL ET estimation. The modified ALARM overestimated ET by 1% on March 22 and underestimated ET by 6 and 22% on April 7 and April 23, respectively. The modified SEBAL underestimated ET by 0.7, 10, and 35% on March 22, April 7, and April 23, respectively. These results demonstrated that the modified ALARM provides reasonable ET estimates that are superior to those obtained from SEBAL or modified SEBAL.
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Acknowledgments
This work has been funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in cooperation with the Jordanian National Center for Agricultural Research and Extension. The lysimeter was established in the study field in 2010 by USDA-ARS. The authors thank JICA’s project manager Dr. Mohammad Al-Jitan for facilitating this project. The authors also thank Eng. Ibrahim Farhan for helping with satellite image processing, Eng. Majd Baara for helping with the collection of field data, Eng. Naser Romya and Dr. Mohammad abu Radaha for managing crop protection and nutrition, and Eng. Banan Derdar for providing information from her studies about the ALARM model.
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Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 144 • Issue 9 • September 2018
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©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Jun 30, 2017
Accepted: Apr 6, 2018
Published online: Jun 26, 2018
Published in print: Sep 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Nov 26, 2018
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