Calculating potential evapotranspiration and single crop coefficient based on energy balance equation using Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2

Evapotranspiration is considered to be an important component of allocating water to agricultural sector; therefore, the more accurate this parameter is, the more optimized the water use can be. This study was conducted in order to evaluate the Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 data (A and B), both separately and combined, in potential evapotranspiration (ETp) and single crop coefficient (Kc) estimations. Field measurements such as crop height, leaf area index (LAI), land surface temperature (LST), air temperature above canopy (AT), and spectral data were exploited in the evaluating process throughout the entirety of 2017–18 growing season under winter wheat and barley cultivations in the Agricultural Research Farms of the University of Tehran. The novel method of Multi-Sensor Data Fusion using the Priestly-Taylor equation was taken into practice for satellite-based ETp (MSDF-ET) calculation from the combination of MODIS thermal and Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 multispectral data. Thermal images were downscaled by the means of the TsHARP algorithm. Thus, prior to ETp calculation, the thermal sharpening algorithm calculated using different spectral indices (SI) was assessed. The SI included NDVI, SAVI, SR, NDWI, NDWIg, and LSWI. The subsequent results were representative of the LSWI qualification under both Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 conditions against thermal and spectral measurements. Also the satellite-based ETp strongly correlated with the ETp derived from the field data illuminating the promising accuracy of the MSDF-ET method in both Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 data. In the end, the time series of Kc obtained from the combination of satellites were fairly indicative of the real-world variations under different vegetation cover and crop growth stages. Overall, using Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 products in integration with each other could significantly result in more reliable decisions in agricultural water resources management.