| Abstract | Large-scale measurements of land surface evaporation are required to develop techniques of integrating small-scale measurements into regional estimates of evaporation. These are necessary inputs into general circulation models that are used for weather forecasting (Mintz, 1984). They are also important for assessing and controlling water resources. Most of the techniques that have been developed over the years to estimate regional evaporation do not account for the heterogeneity in land-form, soil, and vegetative cover (Brutsaert, 1982). Interpretation of satellite data in combination with meteorological data represents a realistic approach for taking this heterogeneity into account and providing representative regional estimates of evaporation (Andre et al., 1986; Sellers et al., 1988). Regional near-surface observations of evaporation fluxes may serve to evaluate the usefulness of such remote sensing models. A direct and promising approach of obtaining near-surface evaporation estimates is from turbulent flux measurements of water vapor by the eddy correlation technique. |
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