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<br />001720 <br /> <br />is limited to a valley in which ground-water inflow is relatively con- <br />stant. The method involves measurements of streamflow at successive <br />points along the channel--in the winter months when evapotranspiration <br />is essentially zero, and again in the growing season. Evapotranspira- <br />tion is taken as the difference between the ground-water inflow during <br />the nongrowing season in the winter and the net gain or loss of surface <br />water entering or leaving the reach during the growing season. <br /> <br />The relation of evaporation, as measured by a Weather Bureau Class A <br />evaporation pan or a Livingston atmometer, to evapotranspiration has <br />received a great deal of attention in recent years especially in <br />California. The relation, a simple ratio, has been expressed as a <br />pan coefficient or an atmometer coefficient. So far, the coefficients <br />developed have been largely for irrigated crops or pasture grasses. No <br />coefficients have been developed for woody phreatophytes. Coefficients <br />for a particular species were found to vary from one environment to <br />another and from month to month. Preliminary evaluation of this method <br />indicates the coefficients should be limited to the same species or <br />species association under the same climatological environment. <br /> <br />The evapotranspiration tent method determines evapotranspiration as <br />the difference in water content of the air entering and leaving a ven- <br />tilated polyvinyl tent enclosing a plant or grass plot. The method is <br />still in the experimental stage, but is continually being improved and <br />refined. The method is simple and the instruments are not expensive. <br />It is, however, limited to a single plant or plot of grass. In addition, <br />there has been considerable difficulty with a temperature build-up in <br />the tent, that, with prolonged confinement may injure or even kill the <br />plant. Injury appears least where water is nonlimiting as with phreato- <br />phytes. <br /> <br />Aerodynamic and Energy-balance Methods <br /> <br />Although the atmospheric flux and energy-balance methods have been used <br />successfully in computing evaporation from a water body, their use in <br />computing evapotranspiration has been largely experimental. The atmos- <br />pheric flux method requires the measurement of fluctuations in water <br />vapor concentration, wind speed and direction at a specified height <br />above the vegetation. The chief difficulty lies in lack of reliable, <br />fast response, sensing and recording instruments. Also, the amount of <br />data is so prodigious as to require processing by a computer. <br /> <br />Within the last year an instrument called the IIEvapotronll has been <br />developed in Australia, which according to the designer, senses the <br />fundamental parameters and automatically calculates the evapotrans- <br />piration rate. However, it is not commercially available, and there <br />are no plans to make it so. <br /> <br />The energy-balance method is an accounting of the incoming and outgoing <br />thermal energy for a vegetated surface. It requires the measurement of <br />wind speed, humidity, air temperature, soil temperature, incoming and <br /> <br />11 <br />