A fundamental requirement for adoption of irrigation management is to determine the crop daily evapotranspiration (ET). On an operational basis the crop coefficient method proposed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) through its report 56 (Irrigation and Drainage Paper) is widely used in the determination of ET and due to its accurate estimative, it has been globally accepted. The ET-based crop coefficient (Kc) obtained from vegetation indices, particularly the Vegetation Index Normalized Difference (NDVI) has been measured in several studies and various crops showing great accuracy when compared to field observations. The objective of this study was to calculate the daily and seasonal ET of cotton crop using the method of dual Kc obtained as a function of the NDVI obtained from TM - Landsat 5 images clouds free. The obtained results are reliable, because less than 10% differences were found when comparing to the Bowen ratio technique observations, corroborating to the method performance achieved in other experiments conducted in other regions of the Earth. Thus, one can conclude that the method both simple and reliable.
Vegetation Index; Latent Heat Flux; Bowen Ratio; Reference Crop Evapotranspiration; TM - Landsat 5
