H021-08
OpenET: Filling a Critical Gap in Water Data for the Western U.S.
Monday, 7 December 2020: 17:58
Virtual
Forrest S Melton1,2, Justin L Huntington3, Robyn Grimm4, Jamie Herring5, Maurice Hall4, Dana Rollison6, Tyler Erickson7, Richard G. Allen8, Martha Anderson9, Philip Blankenau10, Matthew Bromley11, Will Carrara2, Britta Daudert3, Conor Doherty12, Christian Dunkerly13, Joshua Fisher14, MacKenzie Friedrichs15, Alberto Guzman16, Christopher Hain17, Gregory Halverson18, Jody Hansen19, Jordan Harding20, Lee Johnson21, Yanghui Kang22, Ayse Kilic23, Margot Malloy24, Blake Minor25, Charles Morton11, Samuel Ortega-Salazar26, Thomas Ott27, Peter Revelle26, Anderson Ruhoff28, Mitchell Schull29, Gabriel B Senay30, John Michael Volk31, Tianxin Wang32 and Yun Yang33, (1)California State University Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA, United States, (2)NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (3)Desert Research Institute Reno, Division of Hydrologic Sciences, Reno, NV, United States, (4)Environmental Defense Fund, Sacramento, CA, United States, (5)HabitatSeven, Ottawa, ON, Canada, (6)Environmental Defense Fund, San Francisco, CA, United States, (7)Google, Earth Outreach, Mountain View, CA, United States, (8)Univ. of Wyoming - Dept 3295, Laramie, WY, United States, (9)USDA ARS Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory, Beltsville, MD, United States, (10)Idaho Department of Water Resources, Boise, ID, United States, (11)Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV, United States, (12)Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States, (13)Desert Research Institute Reno, Reno, United States, (14)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (15)EROS/SGT, Inc, Sioux Falls, SD, United States, (16)CSU Monterey Bay, NASA ARC-CREST, Seaside, CA, United States, (17)National Integrated Drought Information System, Boulder, CO, United States, (18)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (19)Desert Research Institute, Reno, United States, (20)Habitat Seven, Ottawa, Canada, (21)Univ. Corp. Monterey Bay, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (22)University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States, (23)University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, United States, (24)CEA Consulting, San Francisco, United States, (25)Desert Research Institute Reno, Reno, NV, United States, (26)University of Nebraska Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, United States, (27)Desert Research Institute, Division of Hydrologic Sciences, Reno, NV, United States, (28)IPH / UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brazil, (29)University of Maryland, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, College Park, MD, United States, (30)U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, EROS/North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, Fort Collins, CO, United States, (31)University of Nevada Reno, Reno, NV, United States, (32)CSU Monterey Bay, Marina, CA, United States, (33)University of Maryland College Park, ESSIC, College Park, MD, United States
Abstract:
The lack of consistent, accurate information on evapotranspiration (ET) and consumptive use of water by irrigated agriculture is one of the most important data gaps for water managers in the western United States (US) and other arid agricultural regions. The ability to access information on ET for agriculture is central to improving water budgets across the West, advancing the use of data-driven irrigation management strategies, expanding incentive-driven conservation programs, providing proper credit for investments in agricultural water conservation, and reducing transaction costs for water markets. ET data that can be readily accessed and that is seen as broadly accepted can accelerate adoption of innovative water management practices at scale, and support meaningful progress toward increasing the reliability and sustainability of water supplies.
Recent advances in remote sensing of ET using Landsat and other satellites have led to the development of multiple approaches for field-scale ET mapping that have been used for water resources management applications by US state and federal agencies. The OpenET project (etdata.org) is building upon these advances to develop an operational system for ET mapping for the western US. OpenET has developed a shared platform for data processing and distribution to provide widely accessible ET data at the scale of individual fields (30 m) and at daily, monthly and annual time steps across the 17 western states. Users can also generate custom data summaries via the OpenET API.
OpenET is a collaborative effort involving six ET modeling teams from the US and Brazil, the Environmental Defense Fund, DRI, NASA, USGS, USDA, Google, and key partners from the agriculture and water resource management communities. The project is implementing an ensemble of satellite-based ET models (ALEXI/DisALEXI, METRIC, PT-JPL, SEBAL, SIMS and SSEBop) on Google Earth Engine, which provides a shared computing platform for collaboration on pre-processing of satellite, land cover and meteorological inputs, leading to increased consistency in processing of input data and enhanced agreement across the ensemble of models. We present an overview of the OpenET system and API, and initial results from evaluation of OpenET data against ET data calculated at more than 100 flux tower sites across the US.
