Freitag, 8. März 2019

Summary of the Paper "Crop evapotranspiration estimation with FAO56: Past and future”


Water management is a very well discussed topic in the field of agriculture. And evapotranspiration (ET) represents the key variable in agricultural management and water resources. (Fisher, et al., 2017). Pereira, L.S., et al. introduced in 2014 the paper “Crop evapotranspiration estimation with FAO56: Past and future”, which reflects on the publication “FAO irrigation and drainage Paper No. 56 – crop evapotranspiration” of the food and agriculture organization (FAO) of the united nations, which was introduced in 1998. I am going to explain what Pereira, et al. (2014) had published.

Reference evapotranspiration

In the first place, it is important to know that the FAO56 paper (FAO56) by Allen et al. (1998) provides pursuing guidelines on the FAO paper No 24 (FAO24) by Doorenbos and Pruitt (1977), which had then introduced the two-step crop coefficient-reference ET (Kc-ETref) procedure, to estimate crop ET. ETref is defined by Doorenbos and Pruitt (1977) as “the rate of evapotranspiration from an extensive surface of 8 to 15 cm tall, green grass cover of uniform height, actively growing, completely shading the ground and not short of water”. The FAO56 used this definition as the basic for their own one. And Kc is a standardized crop coefficient to consider crop specific influences on the ET. (Pereira, et al., 2014)
FAO56 standardized the method of estimating the ETref to the Penman–Monteith (PM) method and parameterized it, so that the standardized grass crop reference (ET0) also referred to PM-ET0 can be calculated. Regarding to Pereira (2014), this approach is highly accepted around scientist and was cited more than 11’500 times, in research articles. However, an accurate estimation of ET0 can only be achieved with weather datasets of good quality. (Pereira, et al., 2014)

Crop evapotranspiration

Since the crop coefficients-reference ET concept was widely used around the globe, there was no need to change a lot. Adjustment of the FAO24 Kc coefficients on the new PM-ET0 was required and new coefficients for more crop species and diverse conditions were added.
Furthermore, FAO56 had worked out a dual crop coefficient concept, i.e., Kc = Kcb + Ke, because “the single Kc only represents typical conditions that can vary with wetting frequency […] and with the type of irrigation practised” (Pereira et al.,2014).  Kcb, represents as the basal crop coefficient mainly plant transpiration. The other newly introduced coefficient Ke, is primarily for soil evaporation. An improvement with the dual approach, is that, the estimation of the evaporation is more accurate.
(Pereira et al., 2014)

Water balance model tree nursery

Last but not least, some of the guidelines of the FAO56 also influenced the business of modelling. The dual crop approach per example, is used in several models. Pereira predicts not only an increase in the usage of Kc-ETref in gridded weather data, but also an increasing trend of the dual approach over the single crop approach.
Several parameters, such as weather data for precise estimation of ET0, or all coefficients for the different species in the area, are relevant for modelling the water balance at the tree nursery in Schinzach.

In conclusion, for the “Remote sensing, GIS, and water balance”-Project in Schinznach, it is certainly necessary to estimate the evapotranspiration for modelling the water balance at the tree nursery. Therefore, the Kc-ETref approach from FAO56 seems to be a solid method to estimate the potential ET, as it is now and also will be used worldwide in the future.



References
Doorenbos J., und W.O. Pruitt. 1977. „FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper No. 24.“

Fisher, Joshua B. u. a. 2017. „The Future of Evapotranspiration: Global Requirements for Ecosystem Functioning, Carbon and Climate Feedbacks, Agricultural Management, and Water Resources: THE FUTURE OF EVAPOTRANSPIRATION“. Water Resources Research 53(4): 2618–26.

Pereira, Luis S., Richard G. Allen, Martin Smith, und Dirk Raes. 2015. „Crop evapotranspiration estimation with FAO56: Past and future“. Agricultural Water Management 147: 4–20.

Richard G. ALLEN, Luis S. PEREIRA, Dirk RAES, und Martin SMITH. 1998. „FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper“. : 333.


1 Kommentar:

  1. Hi Yannik
    You cite many papers that are relevant for our topic, but the citation does not correspond to the standard: surnames and without initials and year in the text and correct information about the paper in the bibliography. You have made an in-between thing and omitted the bibliography. In Addition, try to avoid direct quotes in quotation marks and don't put the citation after the last point of a section. You make a good link between what you have read and our project. Apart from these formal deficiencies you make a good reference of the read to our project.
    Cheers
    Luzi

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