Estimating crop coefficients and actual evapotranspiration in citrus orchards with sporadic cover weeds based on ground and remote sensing data.

Accurate estimations of actual crop evapotranspiration are of utmost importance to evaluate crop water requirements and to optimize water use efficiency. At this aim, coupling simple agro-hydrological models, such as the well-known FAO-56 model, with remote observations of the land surface could represent an easy-to-use tool to identify biophysical parameters of vegetation, such as the crop coefficient K under the actual field conditions and to estimate actual crop evapotranspiration. This paper intends, therefore, to propose an operational procedure to evaluate the spatio-temporal variability of K in a citrus orchard characterized by the sporadic presence of ground weeds, based on micro-meteorological measurements collected on-ground and vegetation indices (VIs) retrieved by the Sentinel-2 sensors.

Evaluation of air temperature estimated by ERA5-Land reanalysis using surface data in Pernambuco, Brazil.

This study aimed to analyze the average air temperature data estimated by ERA5-Land reanalysis over 10 years (01/01/2011 to 12/31/2020), based on data from 12 automatic weather stations located in different cities in the state of Pernambuco, northeast of Brazil. For more careful evaluation, the average air temperature data were stratified by mesoregions of the state. ERA5-Land reanalysis data were validated using statistical indices that evaluated the accuracy.