Environ Earth Sci (2015) 74:5443–5452
DOI 10.1007/s12665-015-4557-6
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Variability and sensitivity analyses of spring wheat
evapotranspiration measurements in Northwest China
Chunmei Wang1 • Qingyan Meng1 • Zewei Miao2 • Xingfa Gu1 • Tao Yu1
Yulin Zhan1 • Miao Liu1 • Lijuan Zheng1 • Qiyue Liu1
Received: 25 October 2014 / Accepted: 19 May 2015 / Published online: 4 June 2015
 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Abstract The variability and sensitivity of crop evapo-
transpiration (ET) measurements at field scale are still
poorly understood in the irrigated farmland of arid region
in Northwest China. The spatial and temporal dynamics
and sensitivity of field ET are fundamental for the scaling
up and validation of ET estimates from remote sensing
data. In the study, we analysed the dynamics, impact fac-
tors and sensitivity of spring wheat ET during the growing
season in Northwest China. Results indicated that there was
a significant effect of first irrigation event on the spatial and
temporary variability of ET. At the tillering-shooting stage
(before the first irrigation event), spatial variability of ET
was the lowest and gradually increased with crop growth.
In some experimental plots, spring wheat ET had a sig-
nificantly higher temporal stability than other plots except
for the tillering-shooting stage. The sample sites with
higher temporal stability could be used for long-term
monitoring samples and for up scaling of ET measure-
ments. In comparison with LAI and ET0, surface soil
moisture change Dh0–20 cm was the most sensitive variable
of ET measurements, which could be used as the auxiliary
variable to improve the ET accuracy. With the soil mois-
ture measurements, the relative error of ET was 9.4 % with
only half the number of ET sampling data.
& Chunmei Wang
wangcm@radi.ac.cn
& Qingyan Meng
mengqy@radi.ac.cn
1 sensing data. Recently, multivariate spatial statistics,
Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
2 spearman’s rank coefficient have been adopted to deter-
Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1304 West
Pennsylvania Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
•
Keywords Evapotranspiration  Variability  Temporal
stability  Sensitivity  Soil moisture
Introduction
Crop evapotranspiration (ET) is a crucial component of the
hydrological cycle and in farming system management,
especially in arid agricultural areas (Mauser and Schädlich
1998; Singh et al. 2008; Ding et al. 2013a). Variability and
sensitivity analysis of crop ET are important in hydrologic
modelling, optimizing tillage management practices,
improving crop water use efficiency, and predicting
responses of crop growth to natural and human-induced
disturbances (Lei and Yang 2010; Anderson et al. 2012).
Crop ET measurements and estimates are often con-
ducted at three scales, i.e., field scale, catchment scale and
regional scale. Because of differences in mechanisms
driving and ecological processes between small and large
scale, it is difficult to convert ET measurements and pre-
dictions among various scales (Pietroniro et al. 1994;
Vinnikov et al. 1996; Yoo et al. 1998; Pietroniro and
Prowse 2002; Cosh et al. 2004). It has been shown that
crop ET measurements and estimates at large spatial scale
have to be calibrated and verified with in-site ground truth
measurements at the field scale (Jacobs et al. 2004; De
Lannoy et al. 2006; French et al. 2012). Therefore, crop ET
variability and sensitivity at the field level are fundamental
for the scaling up of ET estimates and are essential for
validation of ET estimates by space- or air-borne remote
including covariance, self-variance, semivariograms, and
mine spatial and temporal variability of atmospheric
evaporation or vegetation ET at the basin or regional levels
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(Tong et al. 2007; Miao et al. 2009, 2011; Yang et al. 2012;
Raziei and Pereira 2013). However, little attention has been
paid to the variability of crop ET at the irrigation field
scale, especially to the impact factor and sensitivity anal-
ysis in the arid farmlands.
Arid areas account for one-third of the earth’s land sur-
face area. In the arid area of Northwest China, over-ex-
ploitation of water resources has led to serious
environmental problems, e.g., soil salinization and deserti-
fication, degradation of grassland, groundwater depletion,
and decrease of vegetation cover (Kang et al. 2004). So the
water resources management is very important for the
development of sustainable agriculture in the Northwest
China. The objectives of this study were (1) to measure and
estimate spring wheat ET in an arid agricultural area of
China, (2) to investigate the spatial and temporal variability
of spring wheat ET at the field level, and (3) to analyse
sensitivity of crop ET measurements and driving variables.
This research provides an insight into crop ET dynamic
measurements and accurate quantification of ET variability
and sensitivity, which are essential to improve efficiency of
water use by crops, to optimize irrigation regimes, to select
variable-control irrigation technology throughout the world.
Study area and sampling
Study area
The experiments were conducted at the Shiyanghe Exper-
imental Station for Water-saving at the Agriculture and
Ecology of China Agricultural University, located in Gansu
Province of Northwest China (N 37520 , E 102500 , altitude
1581 m), during 2010 and 2011 (Fig. 1). The site has a
mean annual sunshine duration of [3000 h, a mean annual
Fig. 1 Location of study area
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Environ Earth Sci (2015) 74:5443–5452
temperature of 8 C and 150 frost-free days annually. The
region is arid, with a mean annual precipitation of 164 mm,
and a mean annual pan evaporation of 2000 mm measured
with a cylinder Class A evaporation pan. The groundwater
table averages below 30 m.
Spring wheat is one of the conventional staple crops in
Northwest China and feeds dozens of millions of people. In
this region, spring wheat is usually grown one season from
March to July per year with deep ploughing. And residue is
removed and no cover remains after sowing. Because of
low precipitation and high evaporation, the water require-
ment of spring wheat is provided mainly by irrigation from
groundwater.
In this study, spring wheat was sown in the experimental
field on March 15, 2010 and March 13, 2011 and harvested on
July 20, 2010 and July 17, 2011. The irrigation regime and
crop management practices are listed in Table 1. To eliminate
the influences of tillage practices on ET measurements, tillage
practices, including land preparation, sowing, harvest and
fertilization, were the same for all experimental plots.
The surface of the experimental field is fairly flat with a
maximum difference in elevation of approximately 0.3 m
(Fig. 2). In the soil profile there is a layer of impermeable
clay below approximately 100 cm, which impedes deep
drainage to groundwater. To ensure homogeneous irriga-
tion within the field, the depth of water layer above the
ground is controlled during the irrigation process.
Experimental design and sampling
Evapotranspiration measurements were made in a spring
wheat field (length 195 m and width 105 m) at the exper-
imental station in 2010. The experimental field was split
into 91 plots, each 15 m 9 15 m. To obtain a robust esti-
mate of spatial variability, 21 samples, spaced at 7.5-m
Environ Earth Sci (2015) 74:5443–5452
Table 1 Crop management
Year Sowing date
and irrigation events during the
2010–2011 spring wheat
growing seasons
2010 15 March
2011 13 March
a
DOS day after sowing
b
Irrigation quota was measured with pump meter, which was calculated from irrigation water amount in
m3 divided by area of the experimental field
Fig. 2 Relative elevation (m) of the experimental field
(195 9 105 m2, with the reference point at the northwest corner of
the field. Filled circle is for grid samples and arrow is sampling
direction)
intervals, were collected in both east–west and south–north
directions. The measurements were sequenced from the
northwest corner plot, and they were named in accordance
with the S-curve sampling direction (labelled as plots 1,
2,…, and 112) (Fig. 2). The measurements started on April
17 (DOS = 33, DOS = day after sowing) and ended on
July 2 (DOS = 109), 2010.
Soil moisture measurements were collected before and
after each irrigation event, including 5 times for wheat
seeding-tillering stage (DOS = 33–43), 4 times for wheat
tillering-shooting stage (DOS = 51–61), 4 times for
shooting-heading stage (DOS = 71–81), and 3 times for
wheat heading-milk stage (DOS = 99–109). Because of
instrument problems, 97 soil moisture measurements were
valid (data for plots 8, 15, 19, 20, 28, 36, 50, 51, 56, 63, 77,
88, 91 and 105 were not available). Volumetric soil
moisture in the root zone (0–100 cm) was measured
through PVC tubes in the plots using a portable device
Diviner 2000 (Sentek Pty. Ltd., Australia). Every 3–5 days
measurements were obtained at 10-cm intervals to a depth
of 100 cm. Additional soil moisture data were collected
before and after irrigation events and after rainfall events.
5445
Harvest date Irrigation events
Irrigation datea Irrigation quota (mm)b
20 July May 1 (DOS = 47) 97.5
May 20 (DOS = 66) 97.5
June 11 (DOS = 88) 97.5
July 4 (DOS = 111) 97.5
17 July May 2 (DOS = 50) 97.5
May 20 (DOS = 68) 97.5
June 9 (DOS = 88) 97.5
July 8 (DOS = 117) 97.5
A portable hydrosense instrument (CS620, Campbell Sci-
entific Inc., USA) was used to measure surface soil moisture
at the 0–20 cm depth (h0–20 cm) at the centre of each plot.
During the soil moisture measurements, three sets of hydro-
sense instruments were used simultaneously to sample data
for 30 min to minimize the effects of measurement time.
A Bowen ratio instrument (Campbell Scientific Inc., USA)
was installed near the south side of central spring wheat in
2010, which was to validate the ET measurements. Leaf area
index (LAI) was measured every 5 days with a canopy
analysis instrument (SunScan, SS1, England). The canopy
instrument was set up in the centre of each plot within a
60 9 60 cm area. Climate variables such as free water sur-
face evaporation capacity, precipitation, and wind speed were
collected from a nearby weather station with a Weather Hawk
instrument (Campbell Scientific, USA).
In 2011, the experiments were conducted to verify ET
measurements. In 2011, the experimental field was 180 m long
(east–west direction) and 150 m wide (south–north direction).
It was split into 144 plots, each 15 9 15 m. Ground measure-
ments were started on May 12 (DOS = 60) and ended on June
7 (DOS = 86), 2011. Because of the impacts of weather and
instrument availability, the 4 times measurements were con-
ducted during two periods (DOS = 60–67 and
DOS = 71–86). Results demonstrated that there were no sig-
nificant differences in soil texture for the top soil layer (the silt
loam according to the international system of soil classification
standard), crop management or irrigation method between the
experimental fields in 2010 and 2011.
Methods
ET estimations with the water budget approach
Crop ETDt was estimated with the water budget approach
(Tong et al. 2007). And the 10-day cumulative ET (ET10)
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was as the variable in this study. The ET values measured
with the water budget approach are affected by individual
errors generated from the water budget components (Tong
et al. 2007). So the estimated ET with the water budget
approach must be verified through the measurements from
other methods.
In this study, the experimental site was fairly flat
(Fig. 2), and precipitation amount was low. An insulated
edge was created between the experimental field and the
neighbouring farmland, so runoff (RDt) from irrigation was
negligible. Contribution from the water table (GDt) was
ignored because the water table was more than 30 m deep
at the study site. The drainage (DDt) could also be ignored
according to soil moisture in the soil profile after irrigation
(Fig. 3) and because a layer of impermeable clay occurred
below *100 cm. Moreover, deep drainages estimated with
Darcy Flux Law were 0.13, 1.53, 1.82, and 1.85 mm for the
stages of seeding-tillering, tillering-shooting, shooting-
heading, and heading-milk, respectively, and the ratio D10
(a 10-day cumulative drainage) to ET10 was \6 %
(Table 2). Therefore, the drainage (D10) was not consid-
ered in the paper.
Fig. 3 Spatial variation of soil moisture at 0–100 cm soil profile
after irrigation (May 20, 2010)
Table 2 Drainage estimated
Growing stages (DOS)
with the Darcy Flux Law and
the calculation of D10/ET10
(assuming positive upward Seeding-tillering (33–43)
direction)
Tillering-shooting (51–61)
Shooting-heading (71–81)
Heading-milk (99–109)
DOS day after sowing, D10 10-day cumulative drainage, ET10 10-day cumulative evapotranspiration
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Environ Earth Sci (2015) 74:5443–5452
During the spring wheat growing seasons in 2010 and
2011, there were four irrigation events (each *97.5 mm;
the irrigation quota was measured with a pump meter,
which was calculated from the volume of irrigation water
amount in m3 divided by area of the experimental field).
Four precipitation events occurred with 4.5, 2, 4 and
18 mm of rainfall. Only the precipitation events of 2 and
4 mm took place in the measurement period. Soil moisture
content in the 0–100 cm layer varied greatly and depended
on irrigation scheduling (irrigation quota and timing). Soil
moisture content had a peak value after irrigation and
decreased gradually thereafter.
Spatial variability
Spatial variability and dependence of ET were expressed by
the empirical semivariances (Burgess and Webster 1980):
1 X Nh
cðhÞ ¼ ½Zðxi þ hÞ  Zðxi Þ2 ð1Þ
2Nh i¼1
where xi is the ith sampling location, c(h) is the semivari-
ance at lag distance h, Z is ET value, Nh is the number of
paired data at distance h (xi, xi ? h).
In the semivariogram model, nugget is the jumping
variance between short sample distances at the origin, led by
sample error and variance for short distances. Range is the
distance in which the difference of the variogram from the
sill becomes negligible. When the distance between sample
points is larger than the range value, the samples become
independent. Sill is the variogram value at the distance of
the range. The semivariance model has been categorized
into a spherical model, an exponential model, a Gaussian
model, a nugget model and a power model (Zhang 2005).
Temporal stability
As a spatial distribution index of water management,
temporal stability (also known as time stability, rank sta-
bility, or temporal persistence) reveals consistency of
spatial measurements of a variable over time (Vachaud
et al. 1985; Bertuzzi et al. 1994). Two techniques, Spear-
man’s rank correlation and temporal analysis of the
D10 with the Darcy ET10 (mm) D10/ET10 (%)
Flux Law (mm)
-0.13 5.49 2.37
-1.53 26.41 5.79
-1.82 36.83 4.94
-1.85 37.35 4.95
Environ Earth Sci (2015) 74:5443–5452 5447

differences between individual and spatial average values, (called ‘‘sensitivity coefficient’’ hereinafter) has been
are often employed to determine temporal stability of ET widely used in ET studies (McCuen 1974; Qiu et al. 1998;
or soil moisture measurements. Temporal stability (cs) of Hupet and Vanclooster 2001), though the sensitivity coef-
ET measurements was calculated using Spearman’s Rank ficient did not account for the interactions among variables
coefficient cs: (Miao et al. 2011).
A positive or negative sensitivity coefficient of a vari-
P
m
6 ðETi;t  ETi;t0 Þ2 able indicates that ET will increase or decrease as the
i¼1 variable increases. The larger the sensitivity coefficient, the
cs ¼ 1  ð2Þ
mðm2  1Þ more sensitive to a specific variable the crop ET will be. In
where m is total sample size, ETi,t and ETi,t0 are ET values fact, the sensitivity coefficient is the slope of the tangent at
of the ith location at time t and t0 . The more stable the ET the origin of the sensitivity curve. The coefficient is
measurements between time t and t0 , the closer to 1 the accurate enough to represent the slope of the sensitivity
stability value (cs) will be. curve within a certain ‘‘linear range’’ around the origin.
The corresponding relative mean error di and variance The width of the range depends on the degree of non-
error r(d)2i were calculated as follows: linearity of the sensitivity curve. When a sensitivity curve
is linear, the sensitivity coefficient represents the change in
1X nt
ETi;t  ETt ET caused by any perturbation of the variable. If the sen-
di ¼ ð3Þ
nt t¼1 ETt sitivity curve is significantly non-linear, the predictive
power of the sensitivity coefficient will be limited to small
nt  2
1 X ETi;t  ETt perturbations only.
rðdÞ2i ¼  di ð4Þ
nt  1 t¼1 ETt

where di is the change in degree of soil moisture relative to
the mean value, and r(d)2i is the temporal stability of crop
ET measurements. To control the standard error and to
obtain the mean of ET estimates, the root mean standard
error was calculated as follows:
RMSEi ¼ ðdi þ rðdÞ2i Þ1=2
2
ð5Þ
In the study, we used extreme differences rather than the
standard deviation of relative differences (Vachaud et al.
1985; Van Pelt and Wierenga 2001), because the repeated
number of ET measurements was low (only four) and
probability distributions were not normal.
Sensitivity coefficient
In ET and eco-hydrological studies, a ‘‘sensitivity curve
method’’ has been adopted to detect correlations between
dependent variables and independent variables (Saxton
1975; Singh and Xu 1997; Qiu et al. 1998; Beres and
Hawkins 2001; Hupet and Vanclooster 2001; Anderton
et al. 2002; Goyal 2004; Miao et al. 2011). To eliminate the
effects of variable dimension on sensitivity of ET mea-
surements, a partial derivative of each variable was nor-
malized as follows:
! (Raghuwanshi and Wallender 1997).
D ET=ET oET Vi
SVi ¼ lim ¼  ð6Þ
DVi !0 DV i= oVi ET
Vi
where SVi is sensitivity coefficient of Vi, and Vi is the ith
variable (Beven 1979). The normalization that calculated
the ‘‘non-dimensional relative sensitivity coefficient’’
Results and discussion
Spatial variability analyses of crop ET
Spring wheat ET10 estimated from the water budget
approach was compared with the measurements obtained
with Bowen ratio instrument. ET10 estimates were 5.49,
26.41, 36.83, and 37.35 mm for the stages of seeding-til-
lering, tillering-shooting, shooting-heading, and heading-
milk, respectively. These estimates were comparable to the
measurements from the Bowen ratio instrument, which
were 5.25, 24.2, 33.58, and 34.98 mm for the same four
stages, respectively.
CV values of cumulative ET showed a decreasing trend
with the increasing of ET observation interval. At the til-
lering-jointing and shooting-heading stages, when the
observation interval of ET was 4-, 6-, 11-, 14-day, CV
values were 0.494, 0.487, 0.462, 0.445 and 0.482, 0.454,
0.339, 0.328, respectively. Likewise, at the heading-milk
stage, CV values were 0.495, 0.460 and 0.431 for 7-, 12-
and 17-day cumulative ET. During the entire growing stage
in 2010, CV values of ET ranged from 0.33 to 0.49, which
is highly spatially heterogeneous even for a small homo-
geneous field conforming to the previous report
Spatial variability of ET increased as the spring wheat
grew. Cumulative ET10 during the growing seasons fol-
lowed a normal distribution and fit a spherical model sig-
nificantly (Table 3). At the seeding-tillering stage, ET10
was only 5.49 mm with a low nugget and sill value. With
crop growth, the sill value of ET10 increased and the

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Table 3 Probability distribution and semivariogram of spring wheat ET estimates at various growing stages
Growing stages (DOS) Data distribution Model Nugget (mm)2 Sill (mm)2 Range (m) R2 ET10 (mm) r (mm)

Seeding-tillering (33–43) Normal Spherical 1.99 2.8 110 0.72 5.49 1.65
Tillering-shooting (51–61) Normal Spherical 82 160 75 0.75 26.41 12.25
Shooting-heading (71–81) Normal Spherical 70 230 55 0.83 36.83 14.87
Heading-milk (99–109) Normal Spherical 70 210 65 0.85 37.35 14.40

Table 4 Spearman rank coefficient of spring wheat ET estimates at various growing stages
Growing stage (DOS) Seeding-tillering (33–43) Tillering-shooting (51–61) Shooting-heading (71–81) Heading-milk (99–109)

Seeding-tillering (33–43) 1
Tillering-shooting (51–61) 0.345 1
Shooting-heading (71–81) 0.464 0.658 1
Heading-milk (99–109) 0.317 0.515 0.64 1

Fig. 4 Rank distribution of (a) (b)

relative errors of spring wheat 1.5 1.5

Mean relative difference

Mean relative difference

ET10: a at various growth 1 1

stages; b except the seeding-
tillering stage (after the first 0.5 0.5
irrigation)
0 0

-0.5 -0.5

-1 -1

-1.5 -1.5
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100
Rank Rank

correlation distance decreased quickly. The large spatial
variability of ET has also been reported by Warrick (2003)
and Brocca et al. (2006).
Temporal stability analyses of crop ET
Temporal stability is used to determine representative sites
of ET measurements over time. The higher the temporal
stability of ET measurements at a sampling site, the better
the site is for long-term ET observations (Sokal and Rohlf
1995; Jara et al. 1998; Hupet and Vanclooster 2004). In this
study, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient cs was cal-
culated to determine temporal variations of crop ET mea-
surements at the sample sites. Seen from Table 4, all cs
were significant at the 99 % confidence level, which sug-
gest that there existed temporal stability of ET measure-
ments, although cs between the seeding-tillering and other
growth stages were low (Table 4; Fig. 4a).
Temporal stability of ET measurements varied with
sampling sites (Fig. 4a). Among all of the observations at
various growth stages, the average relative errors obtained
from 67 sampling plots were less than 30 % (Fig. 4a). The
range of relative error for 80 sampling plots was [0.3. Of
them, sites 94 and 14 represented well the mean ET
measurements. Therefore, sampling locations 94 or 14
could be used to estimate and calibrate the mean ET with a
relative error range of ±0.1. Some sampling sites were
obviously less stable (e.g., site 99) with a relative error of
100 %.
Temporal stability of ET measurements varied with
spring wheat growing stages. ET measurements were more
temporally stable after the seeding-tillering stage (after the
first irrigation). The relative error ranges of 7 locations
were \0.1, including sampling sites 64, 98, 47, 55, 94, 30
and 111. Interestingly, sample site 94 was temporally
stable for the entire growing seasons (Fig. 4b) and could be
used for long-term ET measurements.
Impact factor analysis of crop ET
Crop ET increased with an increase of atmospheric evap-
oration (ET0) and LAI. The correlation coefficient (R) be-
tween ET10 and ET0 was 0.82, whereas R was 0.88 between
ET10 and mean LAI. Spring wheat ET10 was linearly cor-
related with mean LAI at a confidence interval of 95 %.
These results conform to previous literature that found crop
ET increased with the increasing ET0 and LAI
\3.0 m2 m-2 (Al-Kaisi et al. 1989; Ding et al. 2013b).

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Fig. 5 Relationship between

crop ET10 and surface soil
moisture change: a seeding-
tillering stage; b tillering-
shooting stage; c shooting-
heading stage; and d heading-
milk stage

A linear relationship was found between crop ET10 and

changes in surface soil moisture Dh0–20 cm at different
growing stages (Fig. 5). The linear regressions were sig-
nificant at the 95 % confidence level. Linear proportional
coefficients between ET10 and Dh0–20 cm varied from 1.18
to 2.17. Previous literature had also reported that a strong
reciprocal interaction exists between ET and Dh0–20 cm
(Loague 1992; Hupet and Vanclooster 2004; McCabe and
Wood 2006; Gokmen et al. 2012). With the crop growth,
the correlations between Dh0–20 cm and ET10 decreased,
which may have been due to the aging of wheat leaves and
decreases in LAI (Hupet and Vanclooster 2004).
Also, measurements of ET10 in 2011 were used to verify
the relationship between Dh0–20 cm and ET10 in 2010.
Evapotranspiration estimates from the water budget
Fig. 6 Average daily sensitivity coefficients for Dh0–20 cm, LAI and
approach (ETw) match well with the ET estimated by the ET0
changes in soil moisture (ETr) with the measurements data.
The mean relative errors (RE) between ETw and ETr were
12 and 13 %, respectively. Therefore, the coordination from 0.05 to 0.23, with an average of 0.16. The average
method for estimating ET with changes in soil moisture sensitivity coefficient of ET10 to LAI ranged from 0.48 to
was reliable. 0.86, with an average of 0.57, and the average sensitivity
coefficient of ET10 to Dh0–20 cm ranged from 1.09 to 1.73,
ET improvement with the auxiliary variable with an average of 1.28 (Fig. 6). Thus, the variable
of Dh0–20 cm Dh0–20 cm was the most sensitive factor affecting ET10. The
high sensitivity coefficients of ET10 to Dh0–20 cm indicated
The variables Dh0–20 cm, LAI and ET0 all affected ET10. that the auxiliary variable of soil moisture measurement
The average sensitivity coefficient of ET10 to ET0 ranged would improve accuracy of ET10 estimates.

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5450
Fig. 7 Effects of sample sizes
of spring wheat ET observations
on spatial distributions of the
relative error (RE) of ET
estimates with the coordination
method: a n = 24, b n = 48,
c n = 60 and d n = 80
Compared with in-field ET observations, surface soil
moisture measurements are easier and more efficiently, so
Dh0–20 cm data could be used as an auxiliary variable to
improve the accuracy of crop ET estimates. With surface
soil moisture measurements, the relative error of ET esti-
mation was 9.4 % with only half the number of sampling
data (n = 48) (Fig. 7). It is evident that the larger the
sample size is, the lower the relative errors and variability
of ET estimates will be.
Conclusions
The analyses of semivariance, Spearman’s rank coefficient,
impact factors and sensitivity coefficient of crop ET were
conducted to investigate spatio-temporal variability attri-
butes and driving variables of ET measurements. We found
that there was a large effect of the first irrigation event on
the spatial and temporary variability of in-field ET mea-
surements at different growing stages. During the spring
wheat growing seasons, spatial variability of cumulative
ET was the lowest at the tillering-shooting stage (before the
first irrigation) and then gradually increased with crop
growth. In some experimental plots, spring wheat ET had a
significantly higher temporal stability than other plots,
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Environ Earth Sci (2015) 74:5443–5452
especially after the tillering-shooting stage (after the first
irrigation). In comparison with LAI and ET0, surface soil
moisture change in the top 0–20 cm was the most sensitive
variable of ET measurements during the spring wheat
growing seasons. Compared with in-field ET observations,
surface soil moisture is easier and more efficiently mea-
sured, so the changes in soil moisture data could be an
auxiliary variable to improve the ET accuracy. This
research provides an insight into crop ET dynamic mea-
surements and accurate quantification of ET variability and
sensitivity, which are essential to improve efficiency of
water use by crops, to develop optimum irrigation regimes,
and to facilitate advanced variable-control irrigation tech-
nology and sustainable water management.
Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to the Experimental
Station of Water-Saving in Agriculture and Ecology in Gansu Pro-
vince for providing the data. This study was supported partly by the
National Natural Science Foundation (41471310&41371416), China;
the Youth Fund Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences
(Y5SJ0600CX), China; China National Key project of High resolu-
tion earth observation system ‘‘High resolution remote sensing
monitoring and evaluation of water resources demonstration system’’
(08-Y30BO7-9001-13/15); China National Key project of High res-
olution earth observation system ‘‘High resolution remote sensing
monitoring and evaluation of agricultural demonstration system’’ (09-
Y30B03-9001-13/15).
Environ Earth Sci (2015) 74:5443–5452 5451

Appendix De Lannoy GJM, Verhoest NEC, Houser PR, Gish TJ, Van
Meirvenne M (2006) Spatial and temporal characteristics of soil
moisture in an intensively monitored agricultural field (OPE3).
Please see below the Appendix Table 5. J Hydrol 331:719–730
Ding R, Kang S, Li F, Tong L (2013a) Evapotranspiration measure-
Table 5 Definition of variables used in the study ment and estimation using modified Priestley–Taylor model in
an irrigated maize field with mulching. Agr For Meteorol
Variable Description
168:140–148
Ding R, Kang S, Vargas R, Zhang Y, Hao X (2013b) Multiscale
ET0 Atmospheric evaporation (mm)
spectral analysis of temporal variability in evapotranspiration
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