Author(s): Zohreh Izadifar; Amin Elshorbagy
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: Evapotranspiration is an important component in the hydrological cycle, which its accurate estimation is of vital importance in water related problems. The complexity of the evapotranspiration process and its variability in time and space has imposed some limitations on previously developed empirical and physically based evapotranspiration models. In addition, the already proposed models mostly estimate the potential evapotranspiration. The actual evapotranspiration is site-specific and is dependent on the soil moisture, which makes its estimation more complicated. In this study, Genetic Programming (GP) and statistical techniques were employed to generate mathematical equations correlating Eddy Covariance (EC) -measured actual evapotranspiration (AET) to meteorological variables. The results of this study indicated that both proposed models were able to estimate AET reasonably well. Furthermore, the net radiation had the largest contribution to the AET process than other variables.
Year: 2009