Lecture

Evapotranspiration: Water Vapor Release and Transport Mechanisms

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In course

ENV-221: Hydrology for engineers

This is an introductory course to key concepts and methods in physical and engineering hydrology. ...

Description

This lecture focuses on the release of water from the catchment surface as water vapor, known as evapotranspiration. It explores the mechanisms of evaporation, transpiration, and evapotranspiration, emphasizing the importance of vegetation in the process. The instructor discusses energy balance formulations, aerodynamic methods, and combined approaches to estimate evapotranspiration rates. Various equations and methods, such as the Penman-Monteith equation and the FAO approach, are presented for calculating evapotranspiration. The lecture also covers the significance of meteorological data, the role of stomata in transpiration, and the need for balance closure methods in estimating actual evapotranspiration.

Instructors (3)

Andrea Rinaldo

Paolo Benettin

I was born in Padova, Italy, in 1986. After high school, I started the Environmental Engineering program at the University of Padova (Bachelor and Master), where I followed the 'soil protection' curriculum. During my Master studies I spent a semester as Erasmus student at Wageningen University (Wageningen, the Netherlands) to follow courses in Hydrology. After graduation, I decided to bring my education further and I started a Ph.D. at the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Padova. My Ph.D. thesis focused on hydrologic transport and travel time distributions at the catchment scale. My contribution to the subject included both new theoretical formulations and extensive numerical applications to real catchments. During my Ph.D., I also spent 7 months as visiting research fellow at Virginia Tech University (Blacksburg, USA). Since I arrived at EPFL as post-doc in 2015, I started being involved in field and experimental activities, which allowed me to learn about practical experimental problems. In 2017 I had the opportunity to by hired by the ECHO laboratory as a permanent scientist, conducting research in the field of catchment hydrology.

Sara Bonetti

Expertise Ecohydrological and geomorphological modeling Education PhD | Civil and Environmental Engineering 2018 – 2018 Duke University Teaching & PhD PhD Students Benjamin Andre De Blois Kargere, Qiming Sun, Frédéric Laurent Lardet, Taiqi Lian, Felix Bauer Courses Ecohydrological modeling ENV-411 This course provides the theoretical basis for understanding and modeling the interactions between the hydrologic cycle, vegetation, soil, climate, and human society. Hydrology

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Related concepts (32)

Stoma

In botany, a stoma (from Greek στόμα, "mouth", : stomata), also called a stomate (: stomates), is a pore found in the epidermis of leaves, stems, and other organs, that controls the rate of gas exchange. The pore is bordered by a pair of specialized parenchyma cells known as guard cells that regulate the size of the stomatal opening. The term is usually used collectively to refer to the entire stomatal complex, consisting of the paired guard cells and the pore itself, which is referred to as the stomatal aperture.

Vegetation

Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characteristics. It is broader than the term flora which refers to species composition. Perhaps the closest synonym is plant community, but vegetation can, and often does, refer to a wider range of spatial scales than that term does, including scales as large as the global.

Xylem

Xylem is one of the two types of transport tissue in vascular plants, the other being phloem. The basic function of xylem is to transport water from roots to stems and leaves, but it also transports nutrients. The word xylem is derived from the Ancient Greek word ξύλον (xylon), meaning "wood"; the best-known xylem tissue is wood, though it is found throughout a plant. The term was introduced by Carl Nägeli in 1858. The most distinctive xylem cells are the long tracheary elements that transport water.

Vascular plant

Vascular plants (), also called tracheophytes (trəˈkiː.əˌfaɪts) or collectively Tracheophyta (), form a large group of land plants (300,000 accepted known species) that have lignified tissues (the xylem) for conducting water and minerals throughout the plant. They also have a specialized non-lignified tissue (the phloem) to conduct products of photosynthesis. Vascular plants include the clubmosses, horsetails, ferns, gymnosperms (including conifers), and angiosperms (flowering plants).

Water cycle

The water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or the hydrological cycle, is a biogeochemical cycle that describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. The mass of water on Earth remains fairly constant over time but the partitioning of the water into the major reservoirs of ice, fresh water, saline water (salt water) and atmospheric water is variable depending on a wide range of climatic variables.

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