This is an article from the Summer 2015 VPS. For more VPS articles, click here
Modeled Evapotranspiration (ET) within New Mexico. Blue indicates high ET while brown indicates low ET. ET was derived using the Priestley-Taylor based Evapotranspiration method and MODIS data. Image Credit: New Mexico Agriculture and Water Team
Category:åÊMonitoring Forested and Agricultural Landscapes
Project Team: New Mexico Water Resources and Agriculture
Team Location: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory – Pasadena, California
Authors:
Sol Kim
Agustin Muniz
Trevor McDonald
Mentors/Advisors:
Joshua Fisher (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Greg Moore (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Manish Verma (California Institute of Technology)
Abstract:
As New Mexico is experiencing some of the most severe drought in the U.S., equipping water resource management with evapotranspiration data becomes increasingly vital. Knowledge of rangeland conditions is necessary for decisions regarding cattle management, emergency response for rapid rangeland and farmland deterioration, fire management risk decisions, and determining drought severity. New Mexico land managers and decision-makers currently assess rangeland conditions using spatially-limited in-situ spot checks, which provides limited information. Additionally, weekly Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and evapotranspiration products for New Mexico counties are not widely distributed or easily accessible. By providing an automated, streamlined, non-proprietary evapotranspiration product to the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer, New Mexico decision-makers will have easy access to critical evapotranspiration data which will drive water resource decision-making and drought assessment. To create the evapotranspiration product, we utilized the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors onboard NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites to retrieve six MODIS land and four MODIS atmosphere datasets.