poster - International Conference of Agricultural Engineering

2. Materials and Methods
The study was performed at the Las Tiesas experimental farmland of the Agronomic
Technical Institute of the Province of Albacete, over a reference crop (Festuca arundinacea
Schreb) grown over a surface area of 1 hectares, and during a comparative period of forty
days, from September 10th to October 19th of 2011.
Concerning the calculation of the ET, two different methods were used:
a) A weight lysimeter of 2.3x2.7x1.7m installed at the centre of the parcel (see
figure 1), which is endowed with the required equipment to perform a complete
water balance and to evaluate with precision both water deliveries (rain and
irrigation) and losses (evapotranspiration and deep drainage).
b) The FAO-56 Penman-Monteith equation (Allen et al., 1998) by using the
meteorological data acquired by a weather station placed at the reference
crop.
Figure 1. Lysimeter at the Las Tiesas experimental farmland of the Agronomic Technical
Institute of the Province of Albacete
In order to carry out the comparative study between thermocouples and RTDs for
estimating the ET, a fully equipped Bowen station was installed (see figure 2). This station
was endowed with a NR-LITE net radiometer (Campbell Sci. Inst., USA), placed at 2m above
ground level, an A100 cup anemometer (Campbell Sci. Inst., USA), a RAIN-O-MATIC
pluviometer (Campbell Sci. Inst., USA), two HFP01 soil heat flow plates (Hukseflux, Holanda)
and a CS616 water content reflectometer (Campbell Sci. Inst., USA).