Evaporation and sapflow dynamics during sprinkler irrigation of cotton

Quantifying the various components of evapotranspiration during sprinkler irrigation is not only challenging but also difficult to measure and validate using traditional methods. In this paper, measurements of the varying rates of ET using precision energy budget/eddy covariance measurements and sapflow in cotton before, during and after sprinkler irrigation are reported. The trials were carried out at a small scale using small impact type sprinkler irrigation system. Nondimensionalisation of the measured ET and sapflow rates with respect to atmospheric evaporative demand permitted superposition and averaging of multiple time series of data for each of the three phases of irrigation.