Agricultural water optimization is critical for improving water security for the arid Western USA and other water-scarce regions. Optimization includes assessment of agricultural water diversions within conveyance systems managed by irrigation canal companies (ICC), yet few water balance approaches exist at this level. Satellite data provides insight into historical agricultural water use and the potential for optimization. In...

Accurate estimates of actual evapotranspiration (ET a ) are essential for irrigation management in vineyards. This study locally calibrated and validated the Simple Algorithm for Evapotranspiration Retrieving (SAFER) model for California vineyard systems using Landsat 8 imagery and multi-year eddy covariance (EC) measurements collected between 2013 and 2016 in the Central Valley of California. Two calibration approaches were i...

Efficient irrigation management is essential for sustainable crop production under increasing temperatures and tightening water supplies. In vineyards, water status significantly influences vine growth, yield, and fruit quality, and deficit irrigation is often used to impose controlled stress while avoiding damaging levels of water limitation. This creates a practical need for routine, field-scale monitoring of vine water stat...

Remote sensing estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) directly quantifies plant water consumption and provides essential information for irrigation scheduling, which is a pressing need for California vineyards as extreme droughts become more frequent. Many ET models take satellite-derived Leaf Area Index (LAI) as a major input, but how uncertainties of LAI estimations propagate to ET and the partitioning between evaporation and...