Estimativa do balanço de energia e evapotranspiração: aplicações no semiárido utilizando técnicas de sensoriamento remoto.

Abstract

The physical principies related to the phenomenon of evapotranspiration are relatively complex and variabie in time and space. Most of the information and estimates of water consumption in non-agricultural systems comes from local measurements and it is only valid for the region around the experiment. Changes in land use cause changes in the hydrologic cycle and may affect human activities. In semi-arid regions the multi-temporal analysis of changes in land cover and its influences on regional climate is very complicated. Changes in rainfall may change the vegetation cover and consequentiy the components of the hydrologicai cycle. In this context, remote sensing techniques have been used in temporal studies of land use changes and their influences on water and energy balance. Products from orbital sensors are used for understanding the iandscape dynamics and their influence on water and energy balance in semiarid regions of Brazil and Portugal. These products were compared with ground truth. The results show a good correlation between ground truth data and remote sense data. Due to the spatiai characteristic of remote sense products, it was possible to better understand the spatiai and multitemporal dynamics of Iandscape and their influence on water and energy balance in the studied áreas. It is concluded that the utilization of remote sensing techniques is viable in estimating the components of energy balance and evapotranspiration, due to have presented a small difference when compared to field data, which contributed to understanding the dynamics of vegetation and its influence on the energy and water balance in semiarid regions.