García (2026) Evaluating Regional Corn Crop Coefficients with Satellite Evapotranspiration

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Water
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-09-16
• Authors: Luis A. García
• DOI: 10.3390/w18182318

Research Groups

• Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Colorado State University
• Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder

Short Summary

This study evaluates the accuracy of regional corn crop coefficients against satellite-derived evapotranspiration data from 12,430 field-years in Colorado's South Platte River Basin. The results show that commercial fields realized about 88% of near-potential use on a depth basis and 90% by volume.

Objective

• Investigate the consistency of regional corn crop coefficients with satellite-derived evapotranspiration data at a field scale

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Regional (Colorado's South Platte River Basin)
• Temporal Scale: Six years (2020–2025)

Methodology and Data

• Models used: AgroET model
• Data sources: Satellite-derived evapotranspiration, Colorado Agricultural Meteorological Network (CoAgMET) algorithm

Main Results

• Regional curve representing near-potential corn water use exceeded observed aggregate consumptive use by 14.0% (10.9% by volume)
• Commercial fields realized about 88% of near-potential use on a depth basis and 90% by volume
• Refitting the same formulation to the quality-screened commercial population reduced the difference to 4.0%

Contributions

• This study provides an evaluation of regional crop coefficients using satellite-derived data, highlighting their limitations in representing water use across commercial fields.
• The results demonstrate that multi-year satellite records can be used to assess whether regional coefficients remain representative of commercial water use.

Funding

• Not specified

Citation

@article{García2026Evaluating,
  author = {García, Luis A.},
  title = {Evaluating Regional Corn Crop Coefficients with Satellite Evapotranspiration},
  journal = {Water},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.3390/w18182318},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/w18182318}
}