I am working on a Master�??s thesis on how remote sensing can be used to improve our understanding of evapotranspiration. It seems like everyone has their own method estimating water loss. The simplest method I have come across is to calculate the reference ET based on meteorological data and multiply it by a scale factor like NDVI or LAI. More complicated algorithms like METRIC and SEBAL are increasing in popularity as well. And just last week, NASA�??s official MODIS-based evapotranspiration product went live. It is based on algorithm developed by Dr. Qiaozhen Mu and Dr. Steve Running at the University of Montana.
This dataset is especially valuable because it does not require the user to do any image processing on their own. Monthly-averaged images of ET are available for the entire globe going back to January 2000. The script I use to import this data into ArcGIS is available on the CRWR's new blog. Let me know what you think of it. I�??m also curious to hear what methods for estimating evapotranspiration are currently popular in this community.
