Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Basin CESU

archived

The USGS Water Mission Area (WMA) is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner to assist with research into the use of cloud computing capabilities that provide operational access to, and computed summaries of, satellite-based remote sensing data representing actual evapotranspiration (ETa), which are available through OpenET, to be integrated into a national operational hydrologic model. The USGS Water Use Program, within WMA, is supporting National Water Census (NWC) by developing an operational modeling framework to estimate water use for irrigation in the CONUS, and ETa data are used as the fundamental basis for estimating irrigation water use. The Program¿s national irrigation model consists of 3 important design features, including (1) automated data retrieval for model input, (2) simulation of daily water use, and (3) periodic updating of model simulations to provide current and forecasted model results. The OpenET Water Management Tool, which provides ETa estimates at the field scale for several different satellite-based algorithms, can provide area-weighted and time-averaged monthly ETa estimates for the CONUS on a 6-week cycle using the computational resources of Google-Earth Engine (GEE). The ETa estimates are the foundation of irrigation water use model results.

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