Physically, evaporative demand is driven by net radiation (Rn), vapour pressure (ea), wind speed (u2), and air temperature (Ta), each of which changes over time. By analyzing temporal variations in reference evapotranspiration (ET0), improved understanding of the impacts of climate change on...

Crop reference evapotranspiration (ET0) is often used to determine crop water requirement. ET0 maps are useful for regional agricultural and water resources management, and also play an important role in the distributed hydrological modeling. For generating spatial ET0 surfaces,...

Accurate determination of evapotranspiration (ET) is useful to develop precise irrigation scheduling. Although eddy covariance (EC) is a direct method which is widely used to measure ET, its performance in arid region of northwest China is not clear. In this study, ET measured by EC (ETEC) was...

Antioxidation responses of maize roots and leaves to water deficit and rewatering under partial root-zone irrigation (PRI) were investigated using a pot system. Plants were cultured using three irrigation methods, i.e. conventional irrigation (CI), alternate PRI (APRI) and fixed PRI (FPRI) with...

Large areas of vineyards have been established in recent years in arid region of northwest China, despite limited water resources. Water to support these vineyards is mainly supplied by irrigation. Accurate estimation of vineyard evapotranspiration (ET) can provide a scientific basis for...

Partial root-zone irrigation (PRI) is an effective water-saving irrigation method but the heterogeneous soil moisture distribution that may affect soil enzymatic activities and crop water use. With pot-grown maize, we investigated the dry mass accumulation, crop water-use efficiency and the...

Alternate partial root-zone irrigation (APRI) is a water-saving irrigation method but also can regulate crop physiological responses. This study investigated how water-use efficiency (WUE) and other physiological responses were regulated at different growth stages when maize plants were applied...

Complete knowledge of all components of the water balance is essential to optimize water use in irrigated agriculture. However, most water balance components are very difficult to measure in terms of the required time interval and due to the complexity of the processes. An unsaturated zone model...