A Spatial and Temporal Correlation between Remotely Sensing Evapotranspiration with Land Use and Land Cover

In recent years, remote sensing technology has enabled researchers to fill the existing statistics and research gaps on evapotranspiration in different land use classes. Thus, a remotely sensed-based approach was employed to investigate how evapotranspiration rates changed in different land use/cover classes across the Lake Urmia Basin from 2016 to 2020. This was accomplished by applying the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) and the maximum likelihood algorithm. Results showed that from 2016 to 2020, grassland, savanna, and wetland decreased by 1%, 0.58%, and 1%, respectively, whereas an increase of 0.4%, 0.4%, 2.5%, and 1.2% occurred in cropland, urban, shrubland, and water bodies, respectively. Based on the model’s results, over 98, 63, 90, 93, and 91% of the studied area, respectively, experienced a value of evapotranspiration between 0–6, 3–8, 0–4, 0–4, and 0–6 mm from 2016 to 2020. It was also found that these values are more closely related to water bodies and wetlands, followed by cropland, urban areas, savanna, non-vegetated, grassland, and shrubland. A strong correlation with R2 > 70% was observed between the SEBS and the ground-measured values, while this value is lower than 50% for the MODIS Global Evapotranspiration Project (MOD16A2). The findings suggest that evapotranspiration and land use/cover can be extracted on a large-scale using SEBS and satellite images; thus, their maps can be presented in an accurate manner.