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Estimations of Evapotranspiration and Water Balance with Uncertainty over the Yukon River Basin

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Abstract

In this study, the revised Remote Sensing-Penman Monteith model (RS-PM) was used to scale up evapotranspiration (ET) over the entire Yukon River Basin (YRB) from three eddy covariance (EC) towers covering major vegetation types. We determined model parameters and uncertainty using a Bayesian-based method in the three EC sites. The 95 % confidence interval for the aggregate ecosystem ET ranged from 233 to 396 mm yr−1 with an average of 319 mm yr−1. The mean difference between precipitation and evapotranspiration (W) was 171 mm yr−1 with a 95 % confidence interval of 94–257 mm yr−1. The YRB region showed a slight increasing trend in annual precipitation for the 1982–2009 time period, while ET showed a significant increasing trend of 6.6 mm decade−1. As a whole, annual W showed a drying trend over YRB region.

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Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the National Key Basic Research and Development Plan of China (2010CB833504), National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (2009AA122100) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Jointly Sponsored by Beijing Normal University and Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academic of Science, Beijing, 100875, China

    Wenping Yuan & Shunlin Liang

  2. College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Wenping Yuan & Shunlin Liang

  3. United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, SD, 57198, USA

    Shuguang Liu

  4. Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD, 57007, USA

    Shuguang Liu

  5. ASRC Research and Technology Solutions, Contractor to the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, SD, USA

    Zhengxi Tan

  6. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

    Heping Liu

  7. ADNET Systems, Inc., Contractor to the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, SD, USA

    Claudia Young

  8. Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Shunlin Liang

Authors
  1. Wenping Yuan
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  2. Shuguang Liu
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  3. Shunlin Liang
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  5. Heping Liu
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Correspondence to Wenping Yuan.

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Yuan, W., Liu, S., Liang, S. et al. Estimations of Evapotranspiration and Water Balance with Uncertainty over the Yukon River Basin. Water Resour Manage 26, 2147–2157 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-012-0007-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-012-0007-3

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