Field-Scale Evapotranspiration of Flood-Irrigated Rice with Automated METRIC on Google Earth Engine in an Arid Region of Northern Peru

Huanuqueño-Murillo, José; Quille-Mamani, Javier; Vilca-Gamarra, Cesar; Peña-Amaro, Roxana; Quispe-Tito, David; Campos-Ugaz, Walter; Panta-Cosmópolis, Jorge; Ramos-Fernández, Lia

doi:10.3390/rs18152584

Open AccessArticle

Field-Scale Evapotranspiration of Flood-Irrigated Rice with Automated METRIC on Google Earth Engine in an Arid Region of Northern Peru

by

José Huanuqueño-Murillo

¹

,

Javier Quille-Mamani

²

,

Cesar Vilca-Gamarra

¹

,

Roxana Peña-Amaro

¹

,

David Quispe-Tito

¹

,

Walter Campos-Ugaz

³

,

Jorge Panta-Cosmópolis

⁴

and

Lia Ramos-Fernández

^1,*

¹

Department of Water Resources, Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, Lima 15024, Peru

²

Geo-Environmental Cartography and Remote Sensing Group (CGAT), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camí de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain

³

Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Universidad Nacional Pedro Ruiz Gallo, Lambayeque 14013, Peru

⁴

Coalition for Family Farming and Food Systems of Peru—COALICIÓN CAMPESINA, Lima 15076, Peru

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Remote Sens. 2026, 18(15), 2584; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18152584

Submission received: 19 June 2026 / Revised: 29 July 2026 / Accepted: 3 August 2026 / Published: 4 August 2026

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data for Water Resource Management in Agriculture)

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Abstract

Irrigation water management in arid systems requires spatially distributed estimates of crop evapotranspiration (ET) that fixed crop coefficients cannot provide. The actual ET of flood-irrigated rice (Oryza sativa L.) on the arid northern coast of Peru was mapped with the METRIC surface energy balance model (Mapping EvapoTranspiration at high Resolution with Internalized Calibration) on Google Earth Engine (GEE). Ten cloud-free Landsat 8/9 scenes (January–July 2022) were processed over 113 ha at Ferreñafe (Lambayeque) on the 30 m product grid, onto which the 100 m native thermal observation was resampled, with internal calibration based on automatic anchor-pixel selection and hourly ERA5-Land data. Daily field-mean ET ranged from 4.2 to 8.1 mm d⁻¹, peaking during flooding and establishment and declining towards harvest. Because the same reference

E T_{o}

underlies the METRIC internal calibration and the FAO-56 estimate, this is a comparison between two modelling approaches rather than an independent validation. Against the FAO-56 reference ET, METRIC showed a positive bias of

+ 0.65

mm d⁻¹ (percent bias (PBIAS)

= + 13 %

; root mean square error (RMSE)

= 1.23

mm d⁻¹;

r^{2} = 0.57

;

n = 9

, after excluding one date with anomalous reanalysis forcing), concentrated during flooding and after harvest, whereas at full canopy cover the two estimates converged. Two global ET products that share neither the METRIC formulation nor the ERA5-Land forcing reproduce the same seasonal decline once the canopy closes (

r = 0.63

and

0.91

) but stay far below in magnitude, as expected from their 500 m pixel. ET did not differ between sowing methods and varied only slightly among cultivars (∼0.3 mm d⁻¹), against marked intra-field variability. The METRIC–GEE workflow offers a low-cost, high-resolution tool for monitoring water use in data-scarce arid rice systems.

Keywords: surface energy balance; thermal infrared remote sensing; anchor-pixel calibration; paddy rice; Landsat; irrigation water management; FAO-56 benchmarking

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MDPI and ACS Style

Huanuqueño-Murillo, J.; Quille-Mamani, J.; Vilca-Gamarra, C.; Peña-Amaro, R.; Quispe-Tito, D.; Campos-Ugaz, W.; Panta-Cosmópolis, J.; Ramos-Fernández, L. Field-Scale Evapotranspiration of Flood-Irrigated Rice with Automated METRIC on Google Earth Engine in an Arid Region of Northern Peru. Remote Sens. 2026, 18, 2584. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18152584

AMA Style

Huanuqueño-Murillo J, Quille-Mamani J, Vilca-Gamarra C, Peña-Amaro R, Quispe-Tito D, Campos-Ugaz W, Panta-Cosmópolis J, Ramos-Fernández L. Field-Scale Evapotranspiration of Flood-Irrigated Rice with Automated METRIC on Google Earth Engine in an Arid Region of Northern Peru. Remote Sensing. 2026; 18(15):2584. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18152584

Chicago/Turabian Style

Huanuqueño-Murillo, José, Javier Quille-Mamani, Cesar Vilca-Gamarra, Roxana Peña-Amaro, David Quispe-Tito, Walter Campos-Ugaz, Jorge Panta-Cosmópolis, and Lia Ramos-Fernández. 2026. "Field-Scale Evapotranspiration of Flood-Irrigated Rice with Automated METRIC on Google Earth Engine in an Arid Region of Northern Peru" Remote Sensing 18, no. 15: 2584. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18152584

APA Style

Huanuqueño-Murillo, J., Quille-Mamani, J., Vilca-Gamarra, C., Peña-Amaro, R., Quispe-Tito, D., Campos-Ugaz, W., Panta-Cosmópolis, J., & Ramos-Fernández, L. (2026). Field-Scale Evapotranspiration of Flood-Irrigated Rice with Automated METRIC on Google Earth Engine in an Arid Region of Northern Peru. Remote Sensing, 18(15), 2584. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18152584

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Field-Scale Evapotranspiration of Flood-Irrigated Rice with Automated METRIC on Google Earth Engine in an Arid Region of Northern Peru

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