In this course the students will work with satellite data, the GOES-PRWEB water and energy balance algorithm for Puerto Rico, and specialized meteorological equipment.In the first half of the course, the students will install and test two evapotranspiration (ET)-stations at the Agricultural Engineering building.Variables to be measured include net radiation, air humidity and air temperature, wind speed and direction, soil moisture, soil temperature and soil heat flux. The temperature and humidity sensors will be attached to an elevator device, which raises and lowers the sensors to positions within and above the crop canopy every 2 minutes, thus allowing for the vertical humidity and temperature gradients to be measured.
After the ET-stations have been tested at the Agricultural Engineering Building, one of the stations will be moved to the Lajas Experiment Station and the other to the Isabela Experiment Station.Data will be collected over several weeks to make comparisons with the GOES-PRWEB data for different weather conditions.The specific variables to be compared include: air temperature, humidity, wind speed, soil moisture, rainfall, reference evapotranspiration, actual evapotranspiration, crop stress coefficient, net radiation, latent heat flux, sensible heat flux, Bowen ratio, surface resistance and aerodynamic resistance.
- Professor: Eric Harmsen