Measuring Evapotranspiration Effects on Agricultural Fields

April 4, 2014

LINCOLN, Neb. — A scientist in the research and development group at LI-COR Biosciences in Lincoln will talk about how understanding and measuring water use in agricultural fields and natural ecosystems is essential to water conservation in a public lecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The free lecture was recently added to the UNL School of Natural Resources and Nebraska Water Center's spring water seminar series. It will be Wednesday, April 16, 2-3 p.m. in the Hardin Hall auditorium, UNL East Campus, Lincoln.

LI-COR's Luikang Xu will talk on the physical constraints on evapotranspiration as a major component in the water cycle, focusing specifically on factors such as radiation from the sun, wind speed, vapor pressure deficits and advections, along with various plant characteristics.

He will also cover measurement methods such as lysimetry, aerodynamic, eddy-covariance, surface renewal and others and will detail some of the latest developments of current large-scale evapotranspiration networks.

Xu received undergraduate and master's degrees in agricultural meteorology from China Agricultural University in Beijing, China and a Ph.D. in soil science from the University of California-Davis. He specializes in gas and energy flux measurement between an ecosystem and the atmosphere and trace gas flux measurement across the soil surface.

Don Kraus, general manager of the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District in Holdrege, will deliver the final lecture in the water seminar series at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, April 23, at UNL's Hardin Hall.

All water seminar series lectures are free to the public. Most are videotaped and available online at watercenter.unl.edu.