USE OF INFRARED THERMOMETRY TO MEASURE CANOPY-AIR TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCE AT PARTIAL COVER.

The purpose of this research was to develop and evaluate a method for estimating canopy temperatures under partial canopy situations and to do a sensitivity analysis on Heilman's equation in order to study the sensitivity of the projected canopy temperature to parameters used in its prediction. From this study we have been able to show that the predicted canopy temperature is extremely sensitive to composite and soil temperatures, is only moderately sensitive to canopy cover and emissivity and very insensitive to soil emissivity and sky irradiance. In addition, this study also shows that it might be possible to extract canopy temperature from composite temperatures but also that additional studies are needed in order to more precisely understand the effects of the parameters to which the extracted canopy temperature is sensitive and to improve accuracy of evaluating required parameters.