Integration of evapotranspiration estimates from scaled sap flow values and eddy covariance measurements in the BRIDGET toolbox

Comparing estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) from different in-situ measurements – or between in-situ measurements and remote sensing products or modelling outputs – always entails the challenge of different scales and method-specific uncertainties. Especially when the estimates originate in different research disciplines, addressing and quantifying the various sources of uncertainty of the scaled ET values becomes a difficult task for individual researchers who are not familiar with all the methodological details.

The BRIDGET toolbox – developed within the Digital Earth project – wants to support the integration and scaling of diverse in-situ ET measurements by providing tools for storage, merging and visualisation of multi-scale and multi-sensor ET data. This requires an appropriate metadata description for the various measurements as well as an assessment of method-specific uncertainties which need to be supported by domain experts. We combine these tools in a standalone python package and also implement them in an existing virtual research environment (V-FOR-WaTer).

Our first use case defines and quantifies the various sources of uncertainty when scaling sap flow values from individual sensor measurements in a tree up to the transpiration estimate of a stand. Comparison estimates come from eddy covariance measurements, lysimeters and remote sensing products.