Revisiting the Spatial Scale Effects on Remotely Sensed Evaporation

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a push to increase agricultural productivity together with water efficiency. The most viable means to achieve this goal is by employing remote sensing technologies. Currently, multiple satellite platforms can provide the spatial information to crop water use models, each of them having diverse spatial resolutions and radiometric characteristics. Here we analyze the spatial scale effects on crop water use (via evaporation) from three satellite platforms (Landsat 8, Sentinel 2, and CubeSats) finding that each estimate shows different spatial variability and that flux aggregation can result in relative mean absolute error up to 120%.