| The study was conducted at Rush Valley situated southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, for two different ecosystems, namely crested wheat grass (CWG) and sagebrush. Multispectral and thermal imagery were acquired by the Utah State high-resolution airborne multispectral and thermal Imaging system for both the sites on different dates for the year 2002 and 2003.; Surface energy balance fluxes were derived through a remote sensing approach, using the airborne images and some ground data. A spatial distribution for each individual energy flux, for the respective dates and sites was obtained in the form of flux images. Footprint functions were used to extract the integrated values of each individual surface energy balance fluxes from their respective flux images. These integrated values of spatially distributed surface energy balance fluxes were compared with the measured surface energy balance fluxes from 3D Eddy covariance flux towers installed at the two sites (crested wheat and sagebrush). |
