Spatial interpolation of daily reference evapotranspiration in the texas high plains

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

7-21-2011

Abstract

The Texas High Plains Evapotranspiration (ET) Network collects meteorological data from 18 grass weather stations at hourly intervals and estimates hourly and daily reference ET using the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Standardized Reference ET equation. Producers in the Texas High Plains can obtain daily reference ET for any weather station of their interest by subscribing to the fax/email service. However, one concern in using these data is to determine which reference weather station best represents climatic conditions similar to those in their irrigated fields. Availability of accurate daily reference ET maps for the Texas High Plains is expected not only to relieve producers from this concern but also to assist in attracting more producers to adopt the reference ET-based irrigation scheduling. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to evaluate two spatial interpolation methods such as inverse distance weighting (IDW) and ordinary kriging for mapping reference ET in the Texas High Plains. Daily grass reference ET maps were developed for the Texas High Plains using ordinary kriging and IDW methods for the period of 2000-2005, and assessed for mapping accuracy using Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). Comparison of RMSE values between IDW and ordinary kriging methods indicated that IDW outperforms ordinary kriging for approximately 68 of 2179 days. However, both methods equally performed poorly during summer growing seasons when accurate grass reference ET maps are needed for irrigation scheduling. © 2011 ASCE.

Publication Title

World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2011: Bearing Knowledge for Sustainability - Proceedings of the 2011 World Environmental and Water Resources Congress

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