Evapotranspiration of soil water movement in small area vegetation

Abstract

In Greece, crops are frequently cultivated in small isolated areas in close proximity to roads and bare soils and therefore evapotranspiration is affected by local advection. Under these circumstances, oasis effect conditions are present and evapotranspiration is higher than what is expected. In this paper, the evapotranspiration and soil water dynamics of a cotton crop cultivated in small areas under the oasis effect is studied. To this end, two isolated free-drainage lysimeters cultivated with cotton in the year 2007 were used. Soil moisture of the soil profile of both the lysimeters was monitored with two capacitance water content probes. The soil water balance method was used to estimate crop evapotranspiration and corresponding crop coefficients in one of the two lysimeters. These coefficients were 75% larger than the FAO-56 crop coefficients at the mid-season stage. The FAO-56 and the derived crop coefficients were used for the simulation of the water dynamics in the second lysimeter by the SWBACROS model. The derived crop coefficients for these conditions produced much better results than the FAO-56 crop coefficients. The results were improved when crop coefficient value equal to 2.5 was used for the mid-season stage. © 2013 Institute of Agrophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences.