Satellites to assist SA in determining evaporation

Abstract

Water resources management Evaporation is generally the most significant water loss from a catchment. Types of vegetation and land use (e.g. forestry or agriculture) greatly affect evaporation, and therefore the amount of water leaving a catchment. Understanding the temporal and spatial distribution of evaporative losses is essential for managing water in catchments as this is the basis for evaluating how water is consumed and understanding potential tradeoffs related to the allocation of water for anthropogenic uses and the environment. Yet, evaporation remains expensive and difficult to quantify because it varies greatly in space and time. Traditional methods to determine evaporation in South Africa have included the water balance method, energy balance methods (e.g. the Bowen ratio, Eddy covariance, scintillometry) and the heat pulse velocity technique. Other methods such as lysimetry, porometry, stem steady state, the cut stem technique as well as semiempirical and empirical methods have also been used.

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