• Please log in or register to access this feature.
You have free access to this content

ET come home: potential evapotranspiration in geographical ecology

  1. Joshua B. Fisher1,*,
  2. Robert J. Whittaker1,2,
  3. Yadvinder Malhi1

Article first published online: 17 AUG 2010

DOI: 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00578.x

Issue

Global Ecology and Biogeography

Global Ecology and Biogeography

Volume 20, Issue 1, pages 1–18, January 2011

Additional Information

How to Cite

Fisher, J. B., Whittaker, R. J. and Malhi, Y. (2011), ET come home: potential evapotranspiration in geographical ecology. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 20: 1–18. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00578.x

Author Information

  1. 1

    Environmental Change Institute and Biodiversity Research Group, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK

  2. 2

    Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

* Joshua B. Fisher, Water and Carbon Cycles Group, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA, 91109-8099, USA. E-mail: joshbfisher@gmail.com

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 8 DEC 2010
  2. Article first published online: 17 AUG 2010

SEARCH

SEARCH BY CITATION

ARTICLE TOOLS

View Full Article (HTML) Get PDF (1727K)

REFERENCES

  • Abtew, W. (1996) Evapotranspiration measurement and modeling for three wetland systems in South Florida. Water Resources Bulletin, 32, 465–473.
  • Allen, R.G. (1996) Assessing integrity of weather data for reference evapotranspiration estimation. Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, 122, 97–106.
  • Allen, R.G., Pereira, L.S., Raes, D. & Smith, M. (1998) Crop evapotranspiration: guidelines for computing crop water requirements (FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper). FAO – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome.
  • Amiro, B.D., MacPherson, J.I., Desjardins, R.L., Chen, J.M. & Liu, J. (2003) Post-fire carbon dioxide fluxes in the western Canadian boreal forest: evidence from towers, aircraft and remote sensing. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 115, 91–107.
  • Anderson, T.M., Metzger, K.L. & McNaughton, S.J. (2007) Multi-scale analysis of plant species richness in Serengeti grasslands. Journal of Biogeography, 34, 313–323.
    Direct Link:
  • Araújo, A.C., Nobre, A.D., Kruijt, B., Elbers, J.A., Dallarosa, R., Stefani, P., von Randow, C., Manzi, A.O., Culf, A.D., Gash, J.H.C., Valentini, R. & Kabat, P. (2002) Comparative measurements of carbon dioxide fluxes from two nearby towers in a central Amazonian rainforest: the Manaus LBA site. Journal of Geophysical Research, 107, 8090, doi:10.1029/2001JD000676.
  • Baldocchi, D. (1992) A Lagrangian random-walk model for simulating water vapor, CO2 and sensible heat flux densities and scalar profiles over and within a soybean canopy. Boundary Layer Meteorology, 61, 113–144.
  • Baldocchi, D.D. (2005) The role of biodiversity on the evaporation of forests. Forest diversity and function: temperate and boreal systems. (ed. by M.Scherer-Lorenzen, C.Körner and E.-D.Schulze), pp. 131–148. Ecological Studies, Vol. 176. Springer, Berlin.
  • Baldocchi, D. (2008) ‘Breathing’ of the terrestrial biosphere: lessons learned from a global network of carbon dioxide flux measurement systems. Australian Journal of Botany, 56, 1–26.
  • Baldocchi, D., Falge, E., Gu, L.H. et al. (2001) FLUXNET: a new tool to study the temporal and spatial variability of ecosystem-scale carbon dioxide, water vapor, and energy flux densities. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 82, 2415–2434.
  • Bhattarai, K.R. & Vetaas, O.R. (2003) Variation in plant species richness of different life forms along a subtropical elevation gradient in the Himalayas, east Nepal. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 12, 327–340.
    Direct Link:
  • Bhattarai, K.R., Vetaas, O.R. & Grytnes, J.A. (2004) Fern species richness along a central Himalayan elevational gradient, Nepal. Journal of Biogeography, 31, 389–400.
    Direct Link:
  • Bisht, G., Venturini, V., Islam, S. & Jiang, L. (2005) Estimation of the net radiation using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer). Remote Sensing of Environment, 97, 52–67.
  • Blaney, H.F. & Criddle, W.D. (1950) Determining water requirements in irrigated areas from climatological irrigation data. Technical Paper No. 96. US Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, Washington, DC.
  • Bouchet, R.J. (1963) Evapotranspiration re'elle evapotranspiration potentielle, signification climatique. International Association of Hydrological Sciences Publication, 62, 134–142.
  • Boyce, M.S. (1979) Seasonality and patterns of natural selection for life histories. The American Naturalist, 114, 569–583.
  • Budyko, M.I. (1971) Climate and life. Hydrometeoizdat, Leningrad.
  • Budyko, M.I. (1978) The heat balance of the earth. Climatic change (ed. by J.Gribbin), pp. 85–113. Cambridge University Press, New York.
  • Burgess, S.S.O., Adams, M.A., Turner, N.C., Beverly, C.R., Ong, C.K., Khan, A.A.H. & Bleby, T.M. (2001) An improved heat pulse method to measure low and reverse rates of sap flow in woody plants. Tree Physiology, 21, 589–598.
  • Čermák, J., Deml, M. & Penka, M. (1973) New method of sap flow-rate determination in trees. Biologia Plantarum, 15, 171–178.
  • Crago, R.D. (1996) Conservation and variability of the evaporative fraction during the daytime. Journal of Hydrology, 180, 173–194.
  • Currie, D.J. (1991) Energy and large-scale patterns of animal- and plant-species richness. The American Naturalist, 137, 27–49.
  • Diniz-Filho, J.A.F., Bini, L.M. & Hawkins, B.A. (2003) Spatial autocorrelation and red herrings in geographical ecology. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 12, 53–64.
    Direct Link:
  • Donohue, R.J., Roderick, M.L. & McVicar, T.R. (2007) On the importance of including vegetation dynamics in Budyko's hydrological model. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 11, 983–995.
  • Doorenbos, J. & Pruitt, W.O. (1977) Crop water requirements. Irrigation and Drainage Paper 24. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy.
  • Enquist, B.J., Brown, J.H. & West, G.B. (1998) Allometric scaling of plant energetics and population density. Nature, 395, 163–165.
  • Federer, C.A., Vörösmarty, C.J. & Fekete, B. (1996) Intercomparison of methods for calculating potential evaporation in regional and global water balance models. Water Resources Research, 32, 2315–2321.
  • Field, R., O'Brien, E.M. & Whittaker, R.J. (2005) Global models for predicting woody plant richness from climate: development and evaluation. Ecology, 86, 2263–2277.
  • Fischer, M.L., Billesbach, D.P., Berry, J.A., Riley, W.J. & Torn, M.S. (2007) Spatiotemporal variations in growing season exchanges of CO2, H2O, and sensible heat in agricultural fields of the Southern Great Plains. Earth Interactions, 11, 1–21.
  • Fisher, J.B., Debiase, T.A., Qi, Y., Xu, M. & Goldstein, A.H. (2005) Evapotranspiration models compared on a Sierra Nevada forest ecosystem. Environmental Modelling and Software, 20, 783–796.
  • Fisher, J.B., Baldocchi, D.D., Mission, L., Dawson, T.E. & Goldstein, A.H. (2007) What the towers don't see at night: nocturnal sap flow in trees and shrubs at two AmeriFlux sites in California. Tree Physiology, 27, 597–610.
  • Fisher, J.B., Tu, K. & Baldocchi, D.D. (2008) Global estimates of the land-atmosphere water flux based on monthly AVHRR and ISLSCP-II data, validated at 16 FLUXNET sites. Remote Sensing of Environment, 112, 901–919.
  • Fisher, J.B., Malhi, Y., Bonal, D. et al. (2009) The land–atmosphere water flux in the tropics. Global Change Biology, 15, 2694–2714.
    Direct Link:
  • Glenn, A.J., Flanagan, L.B., Syed, K.H. & Carlson, P.J. (2006) Comparison of net ecosystem CO2 exchange in two peatlands in western Canada with contrasting dominant vegetation, Sphagnum and Carex. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 140, 115–135.
  • Granier, A. (1985) A new method of sap flow measurement in tree stems. Annales des Sciences Forestieres, 42, 193–200.
  • Hall, F.G., Collatz, G.J., Los, S.O., Brown, E., Colstoun, D.E. & Landis, D. (2005) ISLSCP Initiative II [DVD/CD-Rom]. NASA.
  • Hamon, W.R. (1961) Estimating potential evapotranspiration. Journal of Hydraulics Division, Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers, 87, 107–120.
  • Hargreaves, G.H. (1975) Moisture availability and crop production. Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 18, 980–984.
  • Hawkins, B.A. & Porter, E.E. (2003) Relative influences of current and historical factors on mammal and bird diversity patterns in deglaciated North America. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 12, 475–481.
    Direct Link:
  • Hawkins, B.A., Field, R., Cornell, H.V., Currie, D.J., Guégan, J.-F., Kaufman, D.M., Kerr, J.T., Mittelbach, G.G., Oberdorff, T., O'Brien, E.M., Porter, E.E. & Turner, J.R.G. (2003) Energy, water, and broad-scale geography patterns of species richness. Ecology, 84, 3105–3117.
  • Hoffman, M.T., Midgley, G.F. & Cowling, R.M. (1994) Plant richness is negatively related to energy availability in semi-arid southern Africa. Biodiversity Letters, 2, 35–38.
  • Holdridge, L.R. (1947) Determination of world plant formations from simple climatic data. Science, 105, 367–368.
  • Howell, T.A., Schneider, A.D. & Jensen, M.E. (1991) History of lysimeter design and use for evapotranspiration measurements. Lysimeters for evapotranspiration and environmental measurements: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Lysimetry, pp. 1–9. ASCE, Honolulu, HI.
  • Hulme, M., Conway, D., Joyce, A. & Mulenga, H. (1996) A 1961–90 climatology for Africa south of the equator and a comparison of potential evapotranspiration estimates. South African Journal of Science, 92, 334–343.
  • Hurlbert, A.H. & Haskell, J.P. (2003) The effect of energy and seasonality on avian species richness and community composition. The American Naturalist, 161, 83–97.
  • Jarvis, P.G. & McNaughton, K.G. (1986) Stomatal control of transpiration: scaling up from leaf to region. Advances in Ecological Research, 15, 1–49.
  • Jensen, M.E. & Haise, H.R. (1963) Estimating evapotranspiration from solar radiation. Journal of the Irrigation and Drainage Division American Society of Civil Engineers, 89, 15–41.
  • Kerr, J.T. & Packer, L. (1997) Habitat heterogeneity as a determinant of mammal species richness in high-energy regions. Nature, 385, 252–254.
  • Kerr, J.T. & Packer, L. (1999) The environmental basis of North American species richness patterns among Epicauta (Coleoptera: Meloidae). Biodiversity and Conservation, 8, 617–628.
  • Kharrufa, N.S. (1985) Simplified equation for evapotranspiration in arid regions. Sonderheft, 5, 39–47.
  • Kreft, H. & Jetz, W. (2007) Global patterns and determinants of vascular plant diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 104, 5925–5930.
  • Linacre, E.T. (1977) A simple formula for estimating evaporation rates in various climates, using temperature data alone. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 18, 409–424.
  • Los, S.O., Collatz, G.J., Sellers, P.J., Malmström, C.M., Pollack, N.H., DeFries, R.S., Bounoua, L., Parris, M.T., Tucker, C.J. & Dazlich, D.A. (2000) A global 9-year biophysical land surface dataset from NOAA AVHRR data. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 1, 183–199.
  • Lu, J., Sun, G., McNulty, S.G. & Amatya, D.M. (2005) A comparison of six potential evapotranspiration methods for regional use in the southeastern United States. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 41, 621–633.
    Direct Link:
  • McGuinness, J.L. & Bordne, E.F. (1972) A comparison of lysimeter-derived potential evapotranspiration with computed values. Technical Bulletin 1452. Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.
  • MacKay, D.S., Ewers, B.E., Cook, B.D. & Davis, K.J. (2007) Environmental drivers of evapotranspiration in a shrub wetland and an upland forest in northern Wisconsin. Water Resources Research, 43, W03442.
  • McKenney, M.S. & Rosenberg, N.J. (1993) Sensitivity of some potential evapotranspiration estimation methods to climatic change. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 64, 81–110.
  • Makkink, G.F. (1957) Testing the Penman formula by means of lysimeters. Journal of the Institution of Water Engineers, 11, 277–288.
  • Marek, R. & Straub, J. (2001) Analysis of the evaporation coefficient and the condensation coefficient of water. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 44, 39–53.
  • Medina, A.I., Martí, D.A. & Bidau, C.J. (2007) Subterranean rodents of the genus Ctenomys (Caviomorpha, Ctenomyidae) follow the converse to Bergmann's rule. Journal of Biogeography, 34, 1439–1454.
    Direct Link:
  • Medlyn, B.E., Robinson, A.P., Clement, R. & McMurtrie, R.E. (2005) On the validation of models of forest CO2 exchange using eddy covariance data: some perils and pitfalls. Tree Physiology, 25, 839–857.
  • Midgley, G.F., Hannah, L., Millar, D., Rutherford, M.C. & Powrie, L.W. (2002) Assessing the vulnerability of species richness to anthropogenic climate change in a biodiversity hotspot. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 11, 445–451.
    Direct Link:
  • Mintz, Y. & Walker, G.K. (1993) Global fields of soil moisture and land surface evapotranspiration derived from observed precipitation and surface air temperature. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 32, 1305–1334.
  • Moncrieff, J.B., Malhi, Y. & Leuning, R. (1996) The propagation of errors in long-term measurements of land–atmosphere fluxes of carbon and water. Global Change Biology, 2, 231–240.
    Direct Link:
  • Mönkkönen, M., Forsman, J.T. & Bokma, F. (2006) Energy availability, abundance, energy-use and species richness in forest bird communities: a test of the species–energy theory. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 15, 290–302.
  • Monson, R.K., Turnipseed, A.A., Sparks, J.P., Harley, P.C., Scott-Denton, L.E., Sparks, K. & Huxman, T. (2002) Carbon sequestration in a high-elevation, subalpine forest. Global Change Biology, 8, 459–478.
    Direct Link:
  • Monteith, J.L. (1965) Evaporation and the environment. Symposium of the Society of Exploratory Biology, 19, 205–234.
  • Monteith, J.L. (1981) Evaporation and surface temperature. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 107, 1–27.
  • Morton, F.I. (1983) Operational estimates of areal evapotranspiration and their significance to the science and practice of hydrology. Journal of Hydrology, 66, 1–76.
  • New, M., Hulme, M. & Jones, P. (2000) Representing twentieth-century space-time climate variability. Part II: development of 1901–1996 monthly grids of terrestrial surface climate. Journal of Climate, 13, 2217–2238.
  • O'Brien, E.M. (1993) Climatic gradients in woody plant species richness: towards an explanation based on an analysis of southern Africa's woody flora. Journal of Biogeography, 20, 181–198.
  • O'Brien, E.M. (1998) Water – energy dynamics, climate, and prediction of woody plant species richness: an interim general model. Journal of Biogeography, 25, 379–398.
    Direct Link:
  • O'Brien, E.M. (2006) Biological relativity to water–energy dynamics. Journal of Biogeography, 33, 1868–1888.
    Direct Link:
  • O'Brien, E.M., Whittaker, R.J. & Field, R. (1998) Climate and woody plant diversity in southern Africa: relationships at species, genus and family levels. Ecography, 21, 495–509.
    Direct Link:
  • O'Brien, E.M., Field, R. & Whittaker, R.J. (2000) Climatic gradients in woody plant (tree and shrub) diversity: water–energy dynamics, residual variation, and topography. Oikos, 89, 588–600.
    Direct Link:
  • Ohmura, A. & Wild, M. (2002) Is the hydrological cycle accelerating? Science, 298, 1345–1346.
  • Olalla-Tárraga, M.Á. & Rodríguez, M.Á. (2007) Energy and interspecific body size patterns of amphibian faunas in Europe and North America: anurans follow Bergmann's rule, urodeles its converse. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 16, 606–617.
    Direct Link:
  • Penman, H.L. (1948) Natural evaporation from open water, bare soil and grass. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 193, 120–146.
  • Peterson, A.T. & Nakazawa, Y. (2008) Environmental data sets matter in ecological niche modelling: an example with Solenopsis invicta and Solenopsis richteri. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 17, 135–144.
  • Phillips, O.L., Hall, P., Gentry, A.H., Sawyer, S.A. & Vásquez, R. (1994) Dynamics and species richness of tropical rain forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 91, 2805–2809.
  • Pinker, R.T. & Laszlo, I. (1992) Modeling surface solar irradiance for satellite applications on a global scale. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 31, 194–211.
  • Priestley, C.H.B. & Taylor, R.J. (1972) On the assessment of surface heat flux and evaporation using large scale parameters. Monthly Weather Review, 100, 81–92.
  • von Randow, C., Manzi, A.O., Kruijt, B., de Oliveira, P.J., Zanchi, F.B., Silva, R.L., Hodnett, M.G., Gash, J.H.C., Elbers, J.A., Waterloo, M.J., Cardoso, F.L. & Kabat, P. (2004) Comparative measurements and seasonal variations in energy and carbon exchange over forest and pasture in South West Amazonia. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 78, 5–26.
  • Raupach, M.R. (2001) Combination theory and equilibrium evaporation. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 127, 1149–1181.
    Direct Link:
  • Raupach, M.R. & Finnigan, J.J. (1988) ‘Single-layer models of evaporation from plant canopies are incorrect but useful, whereas multilayer models are correct but useless’: discuss. Australian Journal of Plant Physiology, 15, 705–716.
  • van Rensburg, B.J., Chown, S.L. & Gaston, K.J. (2002) Species richness, environmental correlates, and spatial scale: a test using South African birds. The American Naturalist, 159, 566–577.
  • da Rocha, H.R., Goulden, M.L., Miller, S.D., Menton, M.C., Pinto, L.D.V.O., de Freitas, H.C. & Silva Figueira, A.M.E. (2004) Seasonality of water and heat fluxes over a tropical forest in eastern Amazonia. Ecological Applications, 14, S22–S32.
  • Roderick, M.L. & Farquhar, G.D. (2002) The cause of decreased pan evaporation over the past 50 years. Science, 298, 1410–1411.
  • Romanenko, V.A. (1961) Computation of the autumn soil moisture using a universal relationship for a large area. Proceedings of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Research Institute, No. 3. Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Research Institute, Kiev.
  • Rosenzweig, M.L. (1968) Net primary productivity of terrestrial communities: prediction from climatological data. The American Naturalist, 102, 67–74.
  • Rossow, W.B., Walker, A.W., Beuschel, D.E. & Roiter, M.D. (1996) International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP): documentation of new cloud data sets. World Meteorological Organization, New York.
  • Rykiel, E.J. (1996) Testing ecological models: the meaning of validation. Ecological Modelling, 90, 229–244.
  • Scholes, R., Gureja, N., Giannecchinni, M., Dovie, D., Wilson, B., Davidson, N., Piggott, K., McLoughlin, C., van der Velde, K., Freeman, A., Bradley, S., Smart, R. & Ndala, S. (2001) The environment and vegetation of the flux measurement site near Skukuza, Kruger National Park. Koedoe, 44, 73–83.
  • Schubert, S., Suarez, M., Park, C.K. & Moorthi, S. (1993) GCM simulations of intraseasonal variability in the Pacific North-American region. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 50, 1991–2007.
  • Shuttleworth, W.J. & Wallace, J.S. (1985) Evaporation from sparse crops – an energy combination theory. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 111, 839–855.
  • Stephenson, N.L. (1990) Climatic control of vegetation distribution: the role of the water balance. The American Naturalist, 135, 649–670.
  • Stephenson, N.L. (1998) Actual evapotranspiration and deficit: biologically meaningful correlates of vegetation distribution across spatial scales. Journal of Biogeography, 25, 855–870.
    Direct Link:
  • Thornthwaite, C.W. (1948) An approach toward a rational classification of climate. Geographical Review, 38, 55–94.
  • Thornthwaite, C.W. & Mather, J.R. (1955) The water balance. Publications in Climatology, 8, 1–104.
  • Turc, L. (1961) Estimation of irrigation water requirements, potential evapotranspiration: a simple climatic formula evolved up to date. Annals of Agronomy, 12, 13–49.
  • Turner, D.P., Ritts, W.D., Cohen, W.B., Gower, S.T., Zhao, M., Running, S.W., Wofsy, S.C., Urbanski, S., Dunn, A.L. & Munger, J.W. (2003) Scaling gross primary production (GPP) over boreal and deciduous forest landscapes in support of MODIS GPP product validation. Remote Sensing of Environment, 88, 256–270.
  • Twine, T.E., Kustas, W.P., Norman, J.M., Cook, D.R., Houser, P.R., Meyers, T.P., Prueger, J.H., Starks, P.J. & Wesely, M.L. (2000) Correcting eddy-covariance flux underestimates over a grassland. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 103, 279–300.
  • Vörösmarty, C.J., Federer, C.A. & Schloss, A.L. (1998) Potential evaporation functions compared on US watersheds: possible implications for global-scale water balance and terrestrial ecosystem modeling. Journal of Hydrology, 207, 147–169.
  • Vourlitis, G.L. & Oechel, W.C. (1999) Eddy covariance measurements of CO2 and energy fluxes of an Alaskan tussock tundra ecosystem. Ecology, 80, 686–701.
  • Willmott, C.J., Rowe, C.M. & Mintz, Y. (1985) Climatology of the terrestrial seasonal water cycle. International Journal of Climatology, 5, 589–606.
    Direct Link:
  • Xu, C.-Y. & Singh, V.P. (2000) Evaluation and generalization of radiation-based methods for calculating evaporation. Hydrological Processes, 14, 339–349.
    Direct Link:
  • Xu, C.-Y. & Singh, V.P. (2001) Evaluation and generalization of temperature-based methods for calculating evaporation. Hydrological Processes, 15, 305–319.
    Direct Link:
  • Zeiger, E. (1983) The biology of stomatal guard cells. Annual Review of Plant Physiology, 34, 441–474.
  • Zhao, S., Fang, J., Peng, C., Tang, Z. & Piao, S. (2006) Patterns of fish species richness in China's lakes. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 15, 386–394.
    Direct Link:
  • Zhuang, Q., McGuire, A.D., O'Neill, K.P., Harden, J.W., Romanovsky, V.E. & Yarie, J. (2003) Modeling soil thermal and carbon dynamics of a fire chronosequence in interior Alaska. Journal of Geophysical Research, 108, 8147, doi:10.1029/2001JD001244.
View Full Article (HTML) Get PDF (1727K)