A Comparative Study of Techniques for Modeling the Spatiotemporal Distribution of Heat and Moisture Fluxes at Different Agroecosystems in Brazil

Abstract

The difficulties to measure the energy fluxes from mixed agroecosystems by field experiments make the use of remote sensing by satellite images a valuable application and its use for this purpose has already been demonstrated in different climate regions (Tang et al. 2009; Teixeira 2010; Miralles et al. 2011; Anderson et al. 2012; Pôças et al. 2013). Remote sensing is a suitable way for determining and mapping the spatial and temporal structure of the water and energy balance components. Hydrological models can be too complex and costly to be used for this purpose because of unavailability of datasets in different hydrological uniform subareas (Majumdar et al. 2007).