Cotton evapotranspiration using very high spatial resolution wv-2 satellite data and ground measurements for precision agriculture

Abstract

In this paper, the preliminary results on Crop Coefficient (Kc) estimation are presented with the view to assess the crop evapotranspiration in specific cotton fields during the growing season of 2015 and 2016 in Thessaly, Greece. Several World View 2 (WV-2) satellite images were used. The so-called ETcsat (Evapotranspiration from satellite data) produced by using the Reference Evapotranspiration (ETo) from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) based on meteorological data and Kc extracted from Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) utilizing the Red and Near Infra-Red (NIR) bands. The values of ETcsat are close to Crop Evapotranspiration (ETc) during the cultivation period of cotton and the estimation of ETc is successful. Kc and RedNDVI relationship is based on WV-2 images and water balance in the field scale. The methodology has proved to be very useful for the implementation and verification of any Integrated Management Programme System for optimal agricultural production.