The impact of greening systems on building energy performance: A literature review

Scarcity of resources and environmental issues caused by human activities stimulate designers and policy makers to search for energy efficient strategies for sustainable development. A considerable amount of energy consumption and CO2 emission comes from the building sector which today accounts for 40% of the world’s energy use. Greenery systems...

Multi-sensor remote sensing parameterization of heat fluxes over heterogeneous land surfaces

The parameterization of heat transfer by remote sensing, and based on SEBS scheme for turbulent heat fluxes retrieval, already proved to be very convenient for estimating evapotranspiration (ET) over homogeneous land surfaces. However, the use of such a method over heterogeneous landscapes (e.g. semi-arid regions or agricultural land) becomes...

Earth observation based assessment of the water production and water consumption of Nile basin agro-ecosystems

The increasing competition for water resources requires a better understanding of flows, fluxes, stocks, and the services and benefits related to water consumption. This paper explains how public domain Earth Observation data based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Second Generation Meteosat (MSG), Tropical Rainfall...

Water Accounting Plus for Water Resources Reporting and River Basin Planning

This thesis introduces Water Accounting Plus (WA+), which is a new framework designed to provide explicit spatial information on water depletion and net withdrawal processes in complex river basins. WA+ is a simple, yet comprehensive and understandable water accounting framework that provides a standardized way of data collection and a...

Mapping evapotranspiration trends using MODIS and SEBAL model in a data scarce and heterogeneous landscape in Eastern Africa

Evapotranspiration (ET) accounts for a substantial amount of the water use in river basins particular in the tropics and arid regions. However, accurate estimation still remains a challenge especially in large spatially heterogeneous and data scarce areas including the Upper Pangani River Basin in Eastern Africa. Using multitemporal Moderate...

Climate, soil, and vegetation controls on the temporal variability of vadose zone transport

Temporal patterns of solute transport and transformation through the vadose zone are driven by the stochastic variability of water fluxes. This is determined by the hydrologic filtering of precipitation variability into infiltration, storage, drainage, and evapotranspiration. In this work we develop a framework for examining the role of the...

Comparative hydrology across AmeriFlux sites: The variable roles of climate, vegetation, and groundwater

Watersheds can be characterized as complex space?time filters that transform incoming fluxes of energy, water, and nutrients into variable output signals. The behavior of these filters is driven by climate, geomorphology, and ecology and, accordingly, varies from site to site. We investigated this variation by exploring the behavior of...

Mapping energy balance fluxes and root zone soil moisture in the White Volta Basin using optical imagery

Accurate information on the distribution of sensible and latent heat fluxes as well as soil moisture is critical for evaluation of background characteristics. Since these fluxes are subject to rapid changes in time and space, it is nearly impossible to determine their spatial and temporal distributions over large areas from ground measurements...

Neerslag, openwaterverdamping en potentieel neerslagoverschot in Nederland, frequentieverdelingen in het groeiseizoen

In this report information is given on the probability of (extreme)dry or wet periods during the growing season. It is rather difficult to define an objective parameter for the indication of what is called "dry"or "wet". In this report we have chosen precipitation RR, open water evaporation Eo and the potential precipitation surplus RR-Epot,...