INTRODUCTION

● Evaporation from soils, water bodies, and plant interception and transpiration are considered
collectively as evapotranspiration (ET)
● ET affects water yield, largely determines what proportion of precipitation input to a watershed
becomes streamflow, and is influenced by land-use activities that alter vegetation and water bodies
on the landscape.
● ET is the result of cumulative evaporation processes with each process requiring a change in the
state of water from liquid to vapor and the net transfer of this vapor to the atmosphere
● Transpiration (T) is the most complex evaporative process. It requires a flow of liquid water to
plant cell surfaces in leaves and exits through plant stomata in most plants. The rate of evaporation
depends on the rate of vapor flow away from these surfaces in all instances

PROCESS
● ET requires both energy and conditions that permit water vapor to flow away from evaporating or
transpiring surfaces.
● Vapor flow is initially a diffusion process in which water molecules diffuse from a region of higher
concentration (the evaporating surface or source) toward a region of lower concentration (a sink) in
the atmosphere
● Water molecules at the soil–atmosphere or leaf– atmosphere interface must first diffuse through the
boundary layer (the layer through which sensible heat is transferred by molecular
conduction only)
● Once water molecules leave the boundary layer, they move into a turbulent zone of the atmosphere
where further movement is primarily by mass transport
● Evaporation describes the net flow of water away from a surface.
● . Water molecules also return to the evaporating surface by mass transport and diffusion
processes
● If the amount of vapor arriving equals the amount leaving, a steady state exists and no evaporation
occurs. If more molecules arrive than leave a surface, a net gain results, which is condensation.

EVAPORATION FROM WATER BODIES

● Evaporation from lakes, ponds, reservoirs, or swimming pools is determined only by energy and
vapor flows.
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● Evaporation from lakes or reservoirs is commonly estimated with the pan evaporation method.

EVAPORATION FROM SOIL SURFACES

● Evaporation from a soil is a more complex phenomenon than evaporation from a water body.
● Given a bare, flat, wet soil surface, the water supply is initially unlimited and the amount of
evaporation depends on the energy supply and the vapor pressure gradient as with a water body.
● Water flow in moist soil is primarily liquid but as soils dry, vapor diffusion through pores becomes
more dominant.
● At about −1500 kPa water potential, water flow occurs mainly as vapor or some combination of
vapor and liquid.
● Liquid flow is reduced greatly at −1500 kPa because the continuity of capillary water and water
films becomes disrupted; this is the point at which most plants become wilted referred to as the
permanent wilting point
● With time, evaporation rates decrease because the water flow to the active evaporating surface is too
slow to keep pace with the energy input
● How much water will evaporate from a soil under these conditions depends largely on soil texture