Agriculture Science Developments, 3(1) January 2014, Pages: 151-156

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Agriculture Science Developments

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2306-7527

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Evaluation of Common Methods of Reference Evapotranspiration

Prediction in Greenhouse by Lysimeteric Data
Hadi Modaberi 1, Mostafa Assari *2, Saber Ansari 3
1
2

Research deputy of Guilan branch of the Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research (ACECR), Gas square, P.O.box 3576, Rasht, Iran.
PHD candidate of irrigation and drainage engineering in Tarbiat Modares University, Iran.
Master of water Engineering, Abdan Faraz Consulting Engineers Company, Iran.

AR TIC LE INF O

AB S TR AC T

Keywords:

A study was conducted in a greenhouse to evaluate five methods of estimating evapotranspiration

over a reference crop (ETo ). This experiment was carried out at the agriculture research center,
Tehran, Iran (latitude 35 41 N, altitude 51 19 E; 1190.8 meter above sea level). To record
evapotranspiration and climatic variables (Solar radiation, air temperature, air humidity and wind
speed) on a daily basis, a meteorological station was installed. Microlysimeter and a reduced pan
were installed inside greenhouse to measure reference evapotranspiration and evaporation. Results
indicated that the ETo values estimated by Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has an appropriate
correlation with values measured by Microlysimeter and have a 1.14 mm.d-1 Root Mean Square
Error and a coefficient of determination of 0.86. Controversy to relationship between ETo values
measured by Microlysimeter and estimated by FAO-Belany-Cridle equation a Root Mean Square
Error and coefficient of determination of 1.54 mm.d-1 and 0.60, respectively wasnt rational. In
addition with use of reduced pan in study period, pan coefficient was 0.46 and coefficient of
determination was 0.82.

Grass reference evapotranspiration

Reduced Pan
Microlysimeter
Artificial Neural Networks

2014 Agric. sci. dev. All rights reserved for TI Journals.

1.

Introduction

Sustainable agricultural systems can be established if the basic water management, water conservation, salinity and erosion control are
recognized. Problem and suggestion are being explored. Achieving higher water use efficiency and higher return value per cubic meter of
water has become a major objective for water use in agriculture.
In arid and semi-arid regions such as Iran where irrigation is essential for crop production, application of excess water causes soil
sanitation, moreover this water can be used for agriculture development. Accurate data for consumptive use is required for irrigation system
design and appropriate irrigation scheduling to prevent crop water stress throughout the growing season for improving water use efficiency.
For more years, certain types of climatological data, such as temperature, precipitation, radiation, wind speed, etc have been correlated
with plant water use. Many empirical formulas and methods were established for this correlation. several studies have indicated PenmanMontith equation could be used directly to estimate crop evapotranspiration over several crops such as grass, soybean, corn, and tomato in
open fields, without using crop coefficient and reference evapotranspiration [1][10][27]. In greenhouse conditions, we point out good
results obtained by Boulard and Wang (2000) in tomato crop, and Ficus benjamina.
Reference evapotranspiration can be estimated by several methods. Class A pan method has been one of the most utilized methods
worldwide because of its simplicity, relatively low cost, and yielding of daily evapotranspiration estimates. Greater precision, however, can
be obtained when it is utilized for periods of at least five days [19]. However, its application inside greenhouses is still object of
controversy. There is no conclusive result of Pan Coefficient (Kp) prediction studies inside greenhouse. In addition, some producers
consider leaving an unproductive area of approximately 10 m occupied by the class A pan inside the greenhouse not viable [11].
Kp is calculated based on wind speed, size of the border crop and relative humidity [8]. To predict Kp these variables can easily be
measured inside a greenhouse. However, Prados (1986) cited by Farias et al. (1994), working on tomato plants in a greenhouse covered
with low-density polyethylene, observed similarity between obtained K values (a product of Kp and Kc - crop coefficient) and Kc values
found in the bibliography, which led the author to conclude that Kp inside greenhouses must be very close to 1.0.
Because of the large area occupied by a class A pan, alternative methods have been sought to estimate ETo inside greenhouses. Among
these methods, the reduced-size is of special attention. Comparing ETo values estimated by different methods, Farias et al. (1994),
observed coefficients of determination equal inside a greenhouse and ETo estimated by the same method, but outside the greenhouse; 0.72,
between ETo estimated by the reduced pan inside and ETo estimated by the class A pan outside; and, 0.81, between ETo estimated by the
reduced pan and ETo by the class A pan, both installed inside. Based on these observations, Farias et al. (1994) indicated the possibility of
installing the reduced pan inside the greenhouse to estimate ETo, instead of using the class A pan .
Medeiros et al. (1997) verified that evaporation (E) in reduced pan was 15% greater than in class A pan, when both were installed inside a
greenhouse. The authors verified coefficients of correlation equal to 0.88, between E in the class A pan installed inside and E in the class A
* Corresponding author.
Email address: assari.mostafa@gmail.com

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pan installed outside; 0.89, between E in the reduced pan installed inside and E in the class A pan installed outside; and, 0.96, between E in
the reduced pan and E in the class A pan, both installed inside the greenhouse. Similar results were obtained by Menezes Jr. et al. (1999) .
Determination of ETo is a complex nonlinear phenomenon because it depends on several interacting climatological factors, such as air
temperature, humidity, wind speed, radiation, as well as on the type and growth stage of the crop. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is an
applicable tool that can be used to estimate ETo . Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are effective tools to model nonlinear systems and
require fewer input data. According to Sudheer et al. (2003), the main advantage of ANN approach over conventional methods is the ability
of solving problems, which are difficult to formalize. Several researchers have used neural networks to estimate the evapotranspiration as a
function of climatic variables. Some of them used the same climatic data required for application of the PM method [17][23][31]. These
researchers have reported that the ANN can predict ET ever better than the PM conventional method. Sudheer et al. (2003) and Zanetti et al
(2007) simplified the input variables and ETo was estimated as a function of air temperature, extraterrestrial solar radiation and daylight
hours .
Considering the influence exerted by climate elements on ETo estimation, it is believed that the variations found are related to different
climatic conditions under which the experiments were conducted. Therefore, the importance of conducting this type of research for regions
showing distinct climates must be emphasized.
Few studies have been done to evaluate the performance of some equations to predict greenhouse ETo and ETc, in Iran. The main objective
of the current research was to evaluate the behavior of some equations and methods to predict standard evapotranspiration of a greenhouse.

2.

Methodology

The experiment was carried out in 2007, Tehran, Iran (altitude 1900.8 m, latitude 35.40.48.N and longitude 51.18.E). Greenhouse was built
at east-west orientation, constructed of a metallic framework, chapel style, 4 m tall, 30 m length and 10 m wide, covered with a 100 m
transparent polyethylene film treated against ultraviolet radiation, and side walls protected by 30% black polypropylene shade-netting, one
micro-lysimeter were cultivated by grass. Crop was planted on March 1st 2007. Microlysimeter was irrigated and the discharge controlled
and measured. Agro-management practices.i.e. (Cultivation, fertilization, pest control etc) were performed during the experimental
period. In addition a reduced pan was installed in the center of the greenhouse to get daily evaporation records.
The soil of the experimental site is calcareous (calcium carbonate content was ranging from 33-35%). It is non saline, with sandy clay
texture of the top soil changing to sandy clay loam in the sub layers. Water was applied according to the soil moisture tensions and contents
(field capacity to 0.7 field capacity).
There are many methods for estimating evapotranspiration. The simplest method is to use a standard evaporation pan which theoretically
integrates the influences of radiation, temperature, humidity and wind.Following are empirical formulas relating to climatological
measurements which.
A) FAO-Blaney-Cridle method
ETo= reference crop evapotranspiration (mm/day)
ETp= potential evapotranspiration (mm/day)
T: mean daily temperature (C) during the considered period.
P: mean daily percentage of total annual daylight hours for a given month and latitude.
a,b : Two coefficients, which depend on minimum relative humidity (RHmin), sun shine hours and day time wind speed(Ud).
B) Priestley-Taylor method
The Priestley-Taylor evapotranspiration consists of the radiation-driven part of the Penman equation multiplied by a coefficient (CPT):
Comparison of Priestley-Taylor method with the Penman equation applied to a short well-watered crop (crop albedo: a = 0.25, wind
function: f(u2) = 2.63 (1+0.54u2)), however, does not give a 1:1 relationship. When Penman is parameterized for open water, the
relationship between Er and Ed is about 4:1, resulting in a CPT value of 1.26. When Penman is parameterized for a short well-watered crop,
this ratio is about 2:1, resulting in a CPT value of 1.42.
C) Makkink method
The Makkink method can be considered as a simplified Priestley -Taylor formula, requiring radiation and temperature as inputs. The
difference is the application of incoming short wave radiation (Rs) and temperature, instead of using net radiation and temperature. The
Makkink formula can thus be derived from the Priestley -Taylor formula:
Similar to the calibration factor derivation for the Priestley-Taylor method, we have determined a calibration factor (Cmk = 0.63).
D) penman-monteith method
The PenmanMonteith equation [21] in the following form is used to estimate daily or hourly ETo for two reference surfaces.
The constant Kt is a time unit conversion factor (86,400 s day1 for ET0 in mmday1; 3600 s h1 for ET0 in mmh1). According to FAO
Irrigation and Drainage Paper no. 56 [1], the reference surface is a 0.12-m height (short crop), cool-season extensive grass such as perennial
fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) or ryegrass (Lolium perenneL.). A second reference surface, recommended by the American Society
of Civil Engineers [17], is given by a crop with an approximate height of 0.50m (tall crop), similar to alfalfa (Medicago sativa L) .
E) Artificial Neural Network (ANN)
Another method that is used in this study to estimate ETo from the atmospheric data (minimum and maximum temperature (Tmax,Tmin),
extraterrestrial radiation (Ra), vapor pressure (ea) and sunshine (n)) is the Artificial Neural Network. This ANN got the best results among
16 networks with different inputs. We used multi-layer preceptron (MLP) neural networks that consist of one input layer, one hidden layer
and one output layer using sigmoid transfer functions. Networks with biases and a single hidden sigmoid layer are by far the most
frequently used network topology, probably because they are capable of approximating any function with a finite number of discontinuities

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Agri culture Scienc e Developments , 3(1) January 2014

[18][6][14]. As long as sufficient training is performed. The transfer function in the networks was logsigmoid for the current research. The
accuracy of the networks was evaluated for each epoch in the training through Root Mean Squared Error (RMS).
In this study, a backpropagation (BP) algorithm was employed to train our MLP neural network. LevenbergMarquardt (LM), a secondorder nonlinear optimization technique, was chosen from the various BP training algorithms available for use in this study. The LM
algorithm is widely applied to many different domains and is faster and produces better results than other training methods [13][20].
Generalization is the ability to provide accurate output values for input variables that have not been seen by the network [2]. Lack of
generalization is caused by over-fitting. The network has memorized the training examples, but it has not learned to generalize new
situations. The most common technique to circumvent over-fitting is based on an early stopping criterion that halts training before
convergence [26][24]. Here, the LM algorithm was used with an early stopping criterion to improve the network training speed and
efficiency. For the criterion, all data were divided into three sets [5]. The first set is the training set for determining the weights and biases
of the network. The second set is the validation set for evaluating the weights and biases and for deciding when to stop training. The
validation error normally decreases at the beginning of the training process. When the network starts to over-fit data, the validation error
begins to increase. The training is stopps when the validation error begins to increase, and the weights and biases will then be derived at the
minimum error. The last data set is for validating the weights and biases to verify the effectiveness of the stopping criterion and to estimate
the expected network operation on new data sets. Seventy percent of the collocated data (training set) was reserved for training the ANN
and the other 30 percent were used to validate the training. After the training process, data were utilized to test the network. The test data
set had a total of 30 days that were not used for training.
F) Reduced pan
In addition a reduced pan was installed in the center of the greenhouse. The reduced pan was constructed of the nr. 22 galvanized iron
sheet, with dimensions, 0.60 m in diameter and 0.250 m in depth. It was installed on a wooden pallet 0.15 m on soil surface [16].
ETo, expressed in mm, for the reduced pan, was determined by the equation: ETo = Kp.E, where: Kp = pan coefficient that evaluated by
lysimetric data, E = pan evaporation (mm). The estimated evaporation values were, the mean daily evaporation value estimated by the
reduced pan installed inside the greenhouse (mm). The daily evaporation values estimated by the reduced pan method were compared with
lysimetric data by linear regression analyses.

3.

Results and discussion

ETo estimates from five methods were compared with the lysimetric data using simple error analysis and linear regression. For each
method, the following parameters were calculated: coefficient of determination (R 2), Mean Absolute Bias Error (MABE) and Root Mean
Square Error (RMSE). These results are shown in table 1. The results indicated agreement between ANN (30 percent of data for test) and
lysimetric data was better than other methods. Many authors have also observed that ANNs estimate evapotranspiration better than other
methods[23][17].
Linear equations were derived from the obtained results to represent mathematical relation between the actual evapotranspiration (ETpa)
and the calculated evapotranspiration (ETpc) from the different formulas are shown in Figure (1). This equation can be safety used for
estimating the actual ETpa using the empirical formulas and methods relating to climatological measurements but there was
underestimation by all methods when ETo was small.

Table (1): Summary of statistics from comparison between actual (lysimeter) and calculated evapotranspiration
FAO 56-Penman-Montith

FAO-Belany-Cridel

Priestley-Taylor

Makkink

ANN

RMSE

1.39

1.54

1.43

1.42

1.14

MSEs

1.94

2.39

2.07

2.02

1.05

MABE

1.1

2.06

1.55

1.47

0.74

0.78

0.60

0.75

0.63

0.86

The relationships between daily evaporation values estimated by reduced pan and actual evapotranspiration are showed in Figure 3. Many
authors have also observed that evapotranspiration inside greenhouses was lower than outdoor [9][20][3]. These results can be explained by
the influence of the main factors of evaporative demand of the atmosphere, such as lower wind speed values, higher relative humidity and
lower incidence of direct solar radiation inside greenhouses.
The mean daily evaporation value estimated by the reduced pan was 2.1 mm, which amount of kp corresponded to 0.4564 [12]. also
verified that the evaporation in a reduced pan was lower than for the class A pan. This fact can be explained by the increase in evaporation
with the decrease in water surface, because of aerodynamic factors and to differences in energy transfer between the water surface and the
atmosphere[12]. In addition to the aerodynamic condition inside greenhouse and outside are different.

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Agricult ure Sci ence Developments , 3(1) January 2014

FAO 56- PM
y = 0.45x + 1.45
R2 = 0.78

6.0
4.0
2.0
0.0

lysimetric data (mm/day)

8
lysimetric data (mm/day)

ETo estimated(mm/day)

FAO-belaney-cridle

makking

8.0

y = 0.46x + 1.60
R2 = 0.63

4
2

2
4
6
lysimetric data(mm/day)

0.0

2.0
4.0
6.0
ETo estimated (mm/day)

Prs-tylr

4
2

0.0

8.0

2.0
4.0
6.0
ETo estimated (mm/day)

8.0

ANN (with Tmax, Tmin, n, Ra, ea)

y = 0.57x + 1.70
R2 = 0.75
ly s imetric data (m m/day )

lysimetric data (mm/day)

y = 0.69x + 3.25
R2 = 0.60

y = 0.94x + 0.81
R2 = 0.86
6

0.0

2.0
4.0
6.0
ETo estimated (mm/day)

8.0

ETo estimated (mm/day)

Figure (1): comparison between actual (lysimeter) and calculated evapotranspiration

Process of deference between actual and calculated evapotranspiration inside greenhouse by ANN method are shown in figure 2.

actul evapotranspiration

ANN output

Output(mm/day)

7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Exemplar
Figure (2): amount of actual and calculated evapotranspiration by means of ANN

The relationships between daily evaporation values estimated by reduced pan and actual evapotranspiration are showed in Figure 3. Many
authors have also observed that evapotranspiration inside greenhouses was lower than outdoor [9][20][3]. These results can be explained by
the influence of the main factors of evaporative demand of the atmosphere, such as lower wind speed values, higher relative humidity and
lower incidence of direct solar radiation inside greenhouses.
The mean daily evaporation value estimated by the reduced pan was 2.1 mm, which amount of kp corresponded to 0.4564 [12]. also
verified that the evaporation in a reduced pan was lower than for the class A pan. This fact can be explained by the increase in evaporation
with the decrease in water surface, because of aerodynamic factors and to differences in energy transfer between the water surface and the
atmosphere[12]. In addition to the aerodynamic condition inside greenhouse and outside are different.

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Agri culture Scienc e Developments , 3(1) January 2014

Figure (3): relationship between evaporation by reduced pan and evapotranspiration by lysimeter

4.

Conclusions

In this paper, the FAO-Penman-monteith, FAO-Belaney-Cridel, Makkink, Priestley-Taylor and the Artificial Neural Network methods
were evaluated based on atmospheric data (Tmax, Tmin, n, ea). All methods significantly underestimated or overestimated mean daily
lysimetric data. The neural network provides quite good agreement with the evapotranspiration obtained by the lysimetric data. The overall
results are of significant practical use because the atmospheric data -based neural network can be used when radiation, and wind speed data
are not available.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the Department of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, Agriculture faculty of
Tarbiat Modares University. The research described in this paper was supported with funds provided by Tarbiat Modares University and
soil and water research institute.

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