Grant awarded to Water Resources, U of I program 

 “Mapping Evapotranspiration from Satellites,” an Idaho Department of Water Resources program created in partnership with the University of Idaho, was one of six programs of 700 entries nationwide to win a 2009 Innovations in American Government Award. Winners were announced Sept. 14 at a reception in Washington, D.C.

The annual award is presented by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University to honor exemplary service and creativity in the public sector at all levels of government in the U.S. The Idaho Department of Water Resources and the University of Idaho will share a $40,000 grant towards disseminating the program around the nation.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is water that is transpired from the leaves of plants and evaporated from the soil. ET data is crucial for water management decisions because it represents the amount of water consumed by irrigated agriculture and other land uses, the Idaho Department of Water Resources said in a release. ET from irrigated agriculture consumes more than 90 percent of the water used in Idaho, where nearly 3.4 million acres of land are irrigated.

The Idaho Department of Water Resources program provides accurate and repeatable evapotranspiration data that can be computed down to the size of a field of crops. It provides ET data that previously wasn’t available at such high resolution, the department said. It is faster and more efficient to acquire, and much less expensive, than former methods.

The Washington Post reported on the Idaho program and its larger applications.

The Idaho Department of Water Resources and the University of Idaho developed important water-resource applications based on ET data over the past eight years, the department said. The department now uses satellite-based ET data as primary input to hydrologic models, in water planning, to legally defend water rights decisions, and for managing endangered fish habitat.

The University of Idaho and the state Department of Water Resources have started sharing knowledge gained from the program with water managers in other Western states, and have started providing training.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration provided initial funding. Dr. Rick Allen of the University of Idaho developed the extensive computer algorithms needed to transform the satellite data into evapotranspiration maps. Tony Morse and Bill Kramber developed the applications at the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

View a NASA video presentation of the IDWR program here. For more information about evapotranspiration, click here.

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