Research Projects

Evapotranspiration (evaporation from plants/trees and land) is a crucial component of terrestrial energy and water budgets. Accurate assessment of its value is important in weather and climate prediction models, and in irrigation scheduling. The complex air-surface interactions due to the usually turbulent flow and radiative transfer make modelling difficult. The current project is aimed at providing plant level information on soil water availability and transpiration rates using plant and leaf mimics. The leaf mimic measures evaporation rates over cm length scales and in minutes, compared to metres and several hours in standard methods. The plant mimic replicates the evaporative pumping employed by plants to draw water from the soil and transpire it into the atmosphere, thus giving water availability in the soil. The plant and leaf mimics may be used for obtaining data that is of fundamental interest which would be useful in development of more accurate evapotranspiration models, and for precise irrigation scheduling in farms.