A Simple Turbulent Exchange Approach for Estimating Reservoir Evaporation in Managing Water for Irrigation Using Remote Sensing and Ground Measurements

Effective management of reservoir water for irrigation is crucial in arid regions prone to drought and water shortages. However, evaporation losses from reservoirs remain poorly understood. Direct measurements typically quantify evaporation only at the measurement site rather than across the entire reservoir. This study introduces the Turbulent Exchange Approach for Reservoir Evaporation Estimation (TEAREE). The TEAREE is a simple model that integrates a bulk aerodynamic formulation with Landsat 8–9 satellite water-surface temperature data and meteorological observations to estimate spatially distributed daily reservoir evaporation. The TEAREE model was first evaluated at Elephant Butte and Caballo reservoirs in NM, USA, and subsequently applied across multiple reservoirs with diverse climatic conditions to demonstrate its applicability for estimating open-water evaporation. Daily evaporation was obtained by upscaling satellite overpass-time evaporation estimates using the daily-to-instantaneous vapor pressure deficit ratio (k_e) and wind speed. The model performed strongly across 12 lakes (R² = 0.91–0.99; RMSE = 0.27–0.85 mm/day) compared with the bulk aerodynamic (B_AER) method. Comparison with eddy covariance (EC) evaporation also showed good agreement. Monte Carlo analysis indicated moderate uncertainty associated with k_e variability, supporting the operational use of a constant k_e = 0.95 for daily upscaling.