Investigating the Performance of Mountain SEBAL Model in the Estimation of Actual Evapotranspiration

Introduction
Water management has always emphasized the need to abandon water storage in reservoirs and pursue a policy of limiting water consumption. Spatial-spatial information on evapotranspiration helps users understand the evacuation and depletion of water due to evaporation and establish the relationship between land use, water allocation, and water consumption. Evapotranspiration is the second element of the water cycle (after precipitation) and its accurate estimation on a regional scale is necessary to design appropriate management strategies. Evapotranspiration is a function of the amount of energy available for vegetation and its exchange. Because of this dependence, it can be estimated using the principle of energy conservation. Due to the limited number of meteorological stations in the country and the high cost of collecting ground data, the cost-effectiveness of the use of satellite data is one of its advantages, and the possibility of retrieving data from all levels of the region at one time is its next advantage. Having timely information makes horizontal monitoring of meteorological and environmental parameters possible. The ability of remote sensing to measure some terrestrial parameters has had an important effect on estimating actual evapotranspiration. The SEBAL model is one of the remote sensing algorithms that calculate plant evapotranspiration based on the momentary energy balance at the level of each pixel of a satellite image. The study area of the current research was the eastern cities of Lake Urmia. The reason for studying this section was the impact of recent droughts on these areas and the reduction of surface and groundwater, which has increased the need to manage water resources in these areas.
Methodology
In the first step of radiometric corrections, the amount of spectral radiance in the thermal band and at the next step, the reflectance in the visible bands, near-infrared, and short-wavelength infrared bands were calculated. As mentioned above, in the SEBAL model, actual evapotranspiration is calculated through satellite imagery and meteorological data is calculated using the surface energy balance. When satellite imagery provides information for its transit time, SEBAL calculates the instantaneous evapotranspiration flux for that time. Landsat 8 images for 2017-2016-2014-2013 years and meteorological data such as Minimum temperature, maximum temperature, dew point temperature, evaporation pan data, sunny hours, and wind speed were analyzed using ENVI 4.8 - Excel 2013- Arc GIS 10.3 software.                                    
Results and Discussion
SEBAL is an image processing model that measures evapotranspiration and other energy conversions on the Earth's surface using digital data measured by remote sensing satellites that emit visible, near-infrared, and thermal infrared radiation. This method uses surface temperature, surface reflection, and normalized plant differential index (NDVI) and their internal relationships to estimate surface fluxes for different types of land cover. In this section, using the values ​​obtained from latent heat flux and evaporation heat flux, first, the amount of instantaneous evapotranspiration for each pixel was calculated. Then, using Ref_ET software, the total 24-hour evapotranspiration was calculated and the daily evapotranspiration rate was obtained for the whole image.
Conclusion
The results showed that there was a good correlation between the values ​​estimated by the remote sensing algorithm (SEBAL) and the FAO-Penman-Monteith method as well as the evaporation pan method. The difference between the amount of SEBAL and the FAO-Penman-Monteith method in the reference plant was less than 4.21 mm/day; the largest difference was related to the 22nd of October. In total, SEBAL and Penman-Monteith methods had an average absolute difference of 4.28 mm/day. According to the results of this study, it can be observed that using the SEBAL model, the actual evapotranspiration and water needs of crops and even orchards and rangelands can be calculated on a large scale. This case could prove the suitability of this model for estimating actual evapotranspiration at different levels of the farm and irrigation networks. Therefore, remote sensing has a very high potential to improve the management of irrigation resources in very large areas using various algorithms and providing an estimate of the amount of ET with minimal use of ground data. Using remote sensing technology and GIS, acceptable results can be obtained in estimating the actual evapotranspiration rate, especially in large areas. If the parameters of the energy balance equations and Penman-Monteith could be calculated from satellite images spatially, with a suitable plant coefficient, the two methods would have similar results in estimating the rate of evapotranspiration. Using this method, the plant coefficient, which is one of the important factors in calculating the evapotranspiration of plants, can be accurately determined.