Estimating Impacts of Agricultural Subsurface Drainage on Evapotranspiration Using the Landsat Imagery-Based METRIC Model

Agricultural subsurface drainage changes the field hydrology and potentially the amount of water available to the crop by altering the flow path and the rate and timing of water removal. Evapotranspiration (ET) is normally among the largest components of the field water budget, and the changes in ET from the introduction of subsurface drainage are likely to have a greater influence on the overall water yield (surface runoff plus subsurface drainage) from subsurface drained (TD) fields compared to fields without subsurface drainage (UD). To test this hypothesis, we examined the impact of subsurface drainage on ET at two sites located in the Upper Midwest (North Dakota-Site 1 and South Dakota-Site 2) using the Landsat imagery-based METRIC (Mapping Evapotranspiration at high Resolution with Internalized Calibration) model. Site 1 was planted with corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L.) during the 2009 and 2010 growing seasons, respectively. Site 2 was planted with corn for the 2013 growing season. During the corn growing seasons (2009 and 2013), differences between the total ET from TD and UD fields were less than 5 mm. For the soybean year (2010), ET from the UD field was 10% (53 mm) greater than that from the TD field. During the peak ET period from June to September for all study years, ET differences from TD and UD fields were within 15 mm (<3%). Overall, differences between daily ET from TD and UD fields were not statistically significant (p > 0.05) and showed no consistent relationship