Applicability of a displaced-beam laser scintillometer in a sparse tall Mediterranean vegetation

Recent studies showed that the sensible heat flux (H) measured with an array of eddy-correlation system has an high spatial and temporal variability over sparse tall vegetation, such as olive trees, whereas H determined with a displaced-beam laser scintillometer (DBLS) appeared to behave more stable. In this study, the results are shown of two field experiments performed over an olive tree plantation in Sicily in 2007 and 2008, in order to investigate the applicability of a DBSL in combination with remote sensing techniques for the actual evapotranspiration assessment. In 2007 the laser beams was closer to the top of the canopy than in 2008. Various aspects of the scintillation method will …