Towards a spatial understanding of water use of several land-cover classes: An examination of relationships amongst pre-dawn leaf water potential, vegetation water use, aridity and MODIS LAI

Abstract

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key physical variable which controls the exchange of water and CO2 between the earth and the atmosphere. Recent improvements in the quality of satellite-derived estimates of LAI, specifically the MODIS LAI product, have led to increased confidence in their operational use. In this study, we examined the relationship amongst MODIS LAI (Collection 5), pre-dawn leaf water potential (ψpd) (a surrogate for plant water availability), vegetation water use (ET) and pan evaporation (E0) in forest, evergreen woodland, open shrubland and savanna in Australia. We present three models which demonstrate how the MODIS LAI product can be used to make spatially explicit predictions..