ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on applying satellite data to terrestrial Evapotranspiration (ET) and water cycle studies. Terrestrial water cycle is of critical importance to a wide array of Earth system processes. It plays a central role in climate and meteorology, plant community dynamics, and carbon and nutrient biogeochemistry. In the early stage of energy balance–based models, most studies used high-resolution remote sensing data; some data sources are even from airborne sensors or sensor mounted above a site. The energy balance models calculate the ET through the residual of the surface absorbed energy as follows. The remotely sensed ET model (RS-ET) algorithm considers both the surface energy partitioning process and environmental constraints on ET and calculates ET as the sum of plant transpiration and soil evaporation. In the RS-ET model, ET is the sum of water lost to the atmosphere from the soil surface through soil evaporation and from plant tissues via transpiration.
