Modeling transpiration with sun‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence observations via carbon‐water coupling methods

Abstract

Successfully applied in the carbon research area, sun‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) has raised the interest of researchers from the water research domain. However, current works focused on the empirical relationship between SIF and plant transpiration (T), while the mechanistic linkage between them has not been fully explored. Two mechanism methods were developed to estimate T via SIF, namely the water‐use efficiency (WUE) method and conductance method based on the carbon–water coupling framework. The T estimated by these two methods was compared with T partitioned from eddy covariance instrument measured evapotranspiration at four different sites. Both methods showed good performance at the hourly (R2 = 0.57 for the WUE method and 0.67 for the conductance method) and daily scales (R2 = 0.67 for the WUE method and 0.78 for the conductance method). The developed mechanism methods provide theoretical support and have a great potential basis for deriving ecosystem T by satellite SIF observations.