Quantifying the evaporative flux from the land surface into the atmosphere is important for local irrigation management, regional water management and global weather prediction, but measuring evapotranspiration (ET) remains a challenge. ET is controlled in part by the land cover, so it is highly variable in space across Zeeland, which makes a regional-scale estimate of ET difficult. Observations of ET at the field scale require specialized equipment, which makes deploying a network of direct ET observations at the regional scale prohibitive. 

We propose to estimate ET the regional scale through a combination of in-situ observations, satellite remote sensing data and numerical modeling. We aim to observe soil, vegetation and meteorological variables that drive ET over several representative land covers for Zeeland. These observations will be combined with a suite of soil-vegetation-atmosphere models to achieve a digital twin of ET in Zeeland for scientific and irrigation-management purposes. Finally, using remote sensing observations, we plan to upscale the field based observations to model ET at a high spatiotemporal resolution across Zeeland. 

This work will be done in collaboration with partners from the Delta Climate Center, including Utrecht and Wageningen Universities, as well as the LTER-LIFE consortium and the hydrological consultancies, KnowH2O and MoistureMatters.

• dr. Mary Rose Mangan
• prof. dr. Hugo de Boer
• dr. Anna Duden
• dr. Gerbrand Koren
• prof. dr. Steven de Jong