Scott Graham from NIWA has approached the University of Waikato to contribute evaporation data collected at Scott Farm to a synthesis study focussing on modelling evaporation from forage crops in NZ. 

The proposed title of the synthesis paper is: "Development of a Penman-Monteith model for New Zealand forage crops." Scott describes the proposed work as follows: "Models of evaporation from plants and soil are important tools for agricultural management and hydrologic modelling.   The Penman-Monteith model, in particular the FAO-56 derivation (Allen et al., 1998), has been used widely to these ends.  In addition to meteorological inputs (solar radiation, air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed), this model requires modification through the use of crop coefficients in order to adequately represent variations in cover species, phenology, management practices (i.e. grazing, harvest) and soil water balance.
The eddy covariance technique provides direct measurements of ecosystem evaporation which can be used for comparison and parameterization of the Penman-Monteith model.  Currently, eddy covariance instruments are deployed across New Zealand measuring evaporation over a range of forage crops, both irrigated and non-irrigated.  We propose to utilise this network in order to determine the impacts of climate, management and soil water balance on evaporation from New Zealand forage crops.  This study will capitalize on previous regionally-based studies (Graham et al., in review, Pronger et al., in prep, McMillan et al., in prep) with the goal of providing a best-practice method for application of the Penman-Monteith model within New Zealand."

Scott's work will in no way interfere with our promised outputs to the NZAGRC, because Scott's main focus is on evaporation, whereas the NZAGRC work at Scott Farm was focussed on carbon. 





