Project Title:
Project Team:
Project Background:
Evapotranspiration and Drought Monitoring Using GOES-R Products for
NIDIS
Christopher Hain (PI; U. of Maryland/ESSIC/NOAA); Xiwu Zhan (Co-PI;
NOAA/NESDIS/STAR); Martha Anderson (Co-I; USDA-ARS-HRSL);
John Mecikalski (Co-I; UAH); Mark Svoboda (NDMC); Brian Wardlow
(NDMC); Yunyue Yu (NOAA/NESDIS/STAR); Istvan Laszlo
(NOAA/NESDIS/STAR); Felix Kogan (NOAA/NESDIS/STAR).
Monitoring evapotranspiration (ET) and the extent and severity of agricultural drought is an important component of food and water security and world crop market assessment. Agricultural systems are climate-sensitive, and conventional surface instrument networks are sparse and report with delays, therefore, satellite remote sensing and modeling play a vital role in monitoring regional water use and providing early warning of impending moisture deficits, and can be used to supplement coarser resolution data from weather and precipitation networks to assess drought conditions. Because land-surface temperature (LST) is strongly modulated by evaporation, thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing data carry valuable information regarding surface moisture availability and therefore have been widely used to map ET, drought, and vegetation stress. Signatures of vegetation stress are manifested in the LST signal before any deterioration of vegetation cover occurs, for example as indicated in the Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index (NDVI), so TIR-based drought indices can provide an effective early warning of impending agricultural drought. Evapotranspiration deficits in comparison with potential ET
(PET) rates provide proxy information regarding soil moisture availability, without any need for knowledge of antecedent precipitation. In regions of dense vegetation, ET probes moisture conditions in the plant root zone, down to meter depths. Our group has spearheaded use of anomalies in the remotely sensed ET/PET fraction ( f
PET
) generated with ALEXI as a drought monitoring tool that samples variability in water use, and demonstrating complementary value in combination with standard drought indices that reflect water supply. Fully automated ALEXI ET and drought monitoring systems have been implemented at 10-km resolution over the continental
U.S. using TIR and shortwave information from current GOES instruments. With the launch of
GOES-R, our capabilities for ET and drought monitoring will be significantly enhanced due to substantial improvements in spatiotemporal resolution, radiometric accuracy, and cloud-clearing capabilities. With GOES-R, the resolution of ALEXI ESI and ET products can be improved to 2km. This will significantly improve utility to the drought community and action agencies served by NIDIS, who are demanding drought information at increasingly higher spatial resolution to support decision making at the sub-county scale.
Project Accomplishments and Ongoing Tasks:
The following tasks have been completed:

Collected and archived all necessary MSG-SEVIRI input products including land surface temperature, solar insolation, surface albedo and leaf area index from the Land Surface
Analysis Satellite Applications Facility (LSA-SAF) for the period of 2007 to present.

An initial version of the ALEXI evapotranspiration database (2007-present) has been processed and archived at 3 km over Europe using the aforementioned input fields.

An initial version of the ALEXI Evaporative Stress Index dataset (2007-present) has been processed and archived at 3 km over Europe and the Nile River basin of Africa.

The following Year 2 tasks are in progress and are not yet complete:

ALEXI evapotranspiration fields are being validated against available ground-based surface flux observation over Europe.

All available European drought indices are being collected and archived including standardized precipitation index (SPI), vegetation health index (VHI), European Drought
Observatory drought classifications, GLDAS soil moisture fields.

ALEXI Evaporative Stress Index (ESI) fields are being validated against all available drought indices over Europe.
Preliminary Findings:
A significant drought occurred across much of western Europe during the early growing season of 2011 (April – June) and the European Drought Observatory (see Fig. 1b) classified much of northern France and Germany at warning and alert levels of drought (similar to severe and extreme classifications used by the National Drought Mitigation Center in the United States).
ALEXI 3 km ESI maps computed using GOES-R proxy observations showed the significant drought conditions over the same regions (see Fig. 1a) highlighting the potential applications of
GOES-R land surface products within the ALEXI system to provide a critical drought monitoring tool at a high spatial resolution. Fig. 2 shows a potential GOES-R application using over the Nile River basin of Africa, a region with very important water resources issues. The map shows ALEXI evapotranspiration (right) for the 2011 growing season. Of particular note are two regions where model-based ET estimates provided by land data assimilation systems have significant issues with underestimating ET: (1) the irrigated agriculture in Nile Delta (upper left) and (2) the Sudd wetlands (lower left), both of which are captured by ALEXI because the retrieved ET is completely derived from the land surface temperature signal without any need for knowledge of antecedent precipitation. This application will be especially important in datasparse regions covered by GOES-R. Additionally, in response to the development of a significant drought and famine event over the Horn of Africa, ALEXI ET and ESI drought maps were generated at 3-km over the region. Initial results over this region show significant dry ESI anomalies over most of Somalia and eastern Ethiopia. These dry anomalies agree well with famine assessments from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET; Fig. 3) and with precipitation anomalies over the region (not shown).
Figure 1. (a) ALEXI Evaporative Stress Index (red shaded pixels show stress) for May 2011 and (b)
European Drought Observatory Drought Classification for May 2011.

Figure 2. Active Food Security Phase from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET; top) and ALEXI Evaporative Stress Index(ESI; bottom) for May 2011.
Figure 3. Active Food Security Phase from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET; top) and ALEXI Evaporative Stress Index(ESI; bottom) for May 2011.

Proposed Year 3 Tasks and Budget :
If the project is selected for the proposed Year 3 funding, the following tasks will be completed:

A full quantitative intercomparison of ALEXI ESI with standard European drought indices over the available period of record: 2007-2012, concluding with a journal article presenting the findings of the study (started in Year 2).

The ALEXI-NESDIS system will be prepared to generate ET and ESI products using available GOES-R proxy products over the U.S. provided by collaborators in the current
GOES-R AWG (Yu, Lazslo and Kogan).

The research team will also conduct a demonstration project in the U.S., mapping ET and
ESI over the NIDIS pilot study areas in the Upper Colorado River Basin, the
Apalachicola-Chattahooche-Flint River Basin in the southeast and in California. These are regions where prototype regional drought early warning systems (DEWS) are being developed under NIDIS, with custom monitoring information and product dissemination tuned for each region’s specific needs. Prior to GOES-R launch, we will generate proxy
2-km information by disaggregating 10-km ET datasets from the current ALEXI-
NESDIS system using the MODIS LST swath product (MOD11-L2) aggregated to
2-km. Tools for automated MODIS disaggregation have already been developed, and will be implemented over the NIDIS pilot regions. 2-km ESI products will be distributed through the NIDIS Drought Portal using web services being developed by our group under current CPO funding. 2- and 10-km ESI products will also be delivered to collaborators Wardlow and Svoboda at NDMC, who will help to evaluate value added for practical drought monitoring applications by the improvement in the GOES-R resolution.
CATEGORIES
1. Direct Labor a. Salaries and Wages (increased
4%/year) fraction FTE:
1) Contractor
TOTAL Salaries and Wages b. Fringe Benefits (increase 1%/year)
1) Contractor overhead
(45%)
TOTAL Fringe Benefits
TOTAL Direct Labor
2. Other Direct Costs a. Subcontract to University of NDMC b. Travel c. Publications
TOTAL Other Direct Costs
TOTAL Direct Costs
3. Indirect Costs
5.
E
10% of Total Direct Costs
TOTAL Indirect Costs
4. Other Applicable Costs
TOTAL - Estimated Costs
Approved and Received:
Proposed Year 3
12 mnth base (2003)
1.170
$88,826
$88,826
$40,860
$40,860
$129,687
$8,800.00
$2,000
$2,000
$12,800
$142,487
$14,249
$14,249
$156,735
Year 2 Supplement
0.330
$25,054
$25,054
$11,525
$11,525
$36,578
$0.00
$1,149
$2,500
$3,649
$40,227
$4,023
$4,023
$44,250
$44,250