<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" specific-use="SMUR" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2025-3919</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Very-High-Resolution, Multi-Season Monitoring of Crop Evapotranspiration and Water Stress with UAV Data and TSEB Integration</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Bates</surname>
<given-names>Jordan</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Montzka</surname>
<given-names>Carsten</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0812-8570</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Vereecken</surname>
<given-names>Harry</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8051-8517</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jonard</surname>
<given-names>François</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8562-2073</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Earth Observation and Ecosystem Modeling (EOSystM) Laboratory, SPHERES Research Unit,  University of Liege, Liege, Belgium</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Bio- and Geosciences: Agrosphere (IBG-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52428 Jülich,  Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>21</day>
<month>08</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2025</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>37</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Jordan Bates et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3919/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3919/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3919/egusphere-2025-3919.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3919/egusphere-2025-3919.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Field-scale estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) using high-resolution data supports water conservation and yield optimization by enabling localized water use monitoring and early detection of crop stress. This study applies the Priestley&amp;ndash;Taylor Two-Source Energy Balance (TSEB-PT) model at 15 cm resolution using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) data over a 10-hectare field across three seasons: sugar beet (2021), potato (2022), and winter wheat (2023). Key inputs included thermal infrared (TIR) for land surface temperature (LST), multispectral (MS) and LiDAR data for canopy characterization, and a fusion of MS derived green area index (GAI) and LiDAR derived plant area index (PAI) to derive the fraction of green LAI (f&lt;sub&gt;g&lt;/sub&gt;). Model outputs were validated against eddy covariance (EC) flux data using footprint modeling. Results showed high sensitivity to LST, emphasizing the importance of accurate thermal calibration. While both GAI and PAI provided comparable LAI inputs during peak growth, GAI better captured functional canopy decline during stress and senescence, especially in winter wheat, where dense structure led to cooling effects unrelated to transpiration. Dynamic f&lt;sub&gt;g&lt;/sub&gt; improved ET accuracy across all crops, particularly under declining canopy function. Overall, TSEB-PT showed strong agreement with EC measurements (RMSE = 0.14 mm/h, R&amp;sup2; = 0.49; R&amp;sup2; = 0.81 excluding senescence). UAV TIR based ET maps also revealed early stress signals prior to changes in MS or LiDAR based metrics. This study demonstrates the value of integrating very-high-resolution UAV data with the TSEB-PT model for multi-crop and season-long ET monitoring and early stress detection.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="37"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft</funding-source>
<award-id>EXC 2070—390732324</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>