ESTIMATION OF EVAPOTRANPIRATION

LYSIMETER

A device for measuring the percolation of water in soil.

 are square or circular boxes, of area around 10 m2 and depth of several meters.
 are installed in an area, say agricultural field and filled with the soil and crops, same as the surrounding area, and flush with
ground

There is no single standard instrument for measuring evapotranspiration. General requirements for the location of evaporation
plots are as follows:

a) The site selected for the plot should be typical of the surrounding area with respect to irrigation, soil characteristics (texture,
layering, genetical type), slope and vegetative cover.
b) The evaporation plot should be located beyond the zone of influence of individual buildings and trees.

(b) The evaporation plot should be located beyond the zone of influence of individual buildings and trees. It should be situated at a distance
not less than 100 to 150 m from the boundaries of the field and not more than 3 to 4 km from the meteorological station. Lysimeters should
be filled by soil taken from within a radius of 50 m of the plot, and the soil and vegetative cover of the lysimeter should correspond to those
of the plot.

Weighing Lysimeter A weighing type lysimeter uses mechanical balance to determine the change in water content of the control volume

The weighing lysimeter (Figure 3) is a popular apparatus in Europe but I have found there is increasing interest in Australia. The
weighing lysimeter is the sort of scientific equipment the politicians love – they are big, they are impressive, they are extremely precise,
and they provide an excellent photo opportunity!

With the weighing lysimeter, an intact soil column is excavated with a specialised auger. This column is encased in a concrete
enclosure and placed back into the ground. Beneath the column is a weighing balance which, depending on the model, can measure
the several tonne soil column to milligram precision. Beneath the balance is a bunker where data loggers, samplers, siphons,
electronics, etc are located. Suffice to say, weighing lysimeters are the most elaborate but precise of all the lysimeters.

Applications for the weighing lysimeter are numerous. They are used in hydrological models, evapotranspiration studies, mine site,
landfill and agricultural monitoring. The weighing lysimeter is commonly used for the precise monitoring soil water movement however
they can also be used in nutrient and chemical monitoring.

In the HYDRAULIC WEIGHING LYSIMETER the soil sample is placed in a tank floating on a fluid. Changes in level reflect weight
changes in the sample. Extremely small weight changes can be detected using this method.

A weighing type lysimeter uses mechanical balance to determine the change in water content of the control volume. The hydraulics-
based equipment employs hydrostatic principles of weighing, and in the volumetric based ones, ET is measured by the amount of
water added or removed from the control volume to keep constant water content. Note that lysimeters are difficult and costly to
install and maintain. In view of the difficulties in direct measurement of ET, indirect methods are generally used to estimate it. This
requires measurements of meteorological variables which influence evaporation. Commonly, pan evaporation is multiplied by a
coefficient to get the crop ET. Evapotranspiration can be estimated by the water budget or heat-budget methods; many empirical
formulae have been developed which are based on meteorological data. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United
Nations have adopted the Penman-Monteith (PM) equation as the standard technique to compute reference ET (Allen et al. 1998).

Remote-sensing observations combined with ancillary (a person whose work provides necessary support to the primary activities of an
organization, institution, or industry.) meteorological data have been used in obtaining indirect estimates of ET over a range of
temporal and spatial scales (Schulz and Engman, 2000). Recently there has been considerable progress in the remote-sensing of
parameters, including:
(a) Incoming solar radiation;
Incoming Solar Radiation
The sun is a blazing 5500 C and so it emits very intense radiation that has short wavelengths. For this reason, solar radiation is
sometimes also called shortwave radiation. Most (44%) of the sun's radiation is in the visible wavelengths (0.4 (violet) to 0.7 (red)
micrometers).

(b) Surface albedo; The surface albedo quantifies the fraction of the sunlight reflected by the surface of the Earth
Albedo (/ælˈbiːdoʊ/) (Latin: albedo, meaning "whiteness") is the measure of the diffuse reflection of solar radiation out of the total
solar radiation received by an astronomical body (e.g. a planet like Earth). It is dimensionless and measured on a scale from 0
(corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation) to 1 (corresponding to a body that reflects all incident radiation).
Surface albedo is defined as the ratio of irradiance reflected to the irradiance received by a surface.
(c) Vegetative cover; Vegetation cover defines the percentage of soil which is covered by green vegetation
(d) Surface temperature;
(e) Surface soil moisture.
Remote-sensing of several important parameters used to estimate evaporation is made by measuring the electromagnetic radiation
in a particular waveband reflected or emitted from the Earth’s surface. Furthermore, remote-sensing has a potentially important role
because of its areal coverage in the spatial extrapolation process of ET.