Importance of Soil Moisture and Vegetation Cover for Energy Balance partition in Burkina Faso

Land surface characteristics are the main control on hydrologic processes, the driver of most livelihoods, in semi arid West Africa. We use the energy and water balance measured with two eddy-covariance towers, coupled with a dense network of small, wireless meteorological stations in a small (3.5 km2) catchment to understand these relationships. Time series of monthly averages of soil moisture, rainfall, air temperature, cloud cover, components of net radiation, wind speed, and NDVI are presented in relation to the evaporative fraction and energy balance. We found that both latent and sensible heat fluxes are greater over mixed forest and savanna areas compared agricultural land. Sensible heat is found to be most different between the two land-covers at the end of the year, when the grass and vegetation is dry, and latent heat is found to be most different at the beginning of the year, when bare ground dominates. Further examination shows that soil moisture and vegetation indexes provide the main controls on evaporative fraction. These findings have implications for modeling the evaporation over large regions based on remotely sensed land surface temperature. The site is characteristic of the contrasts in vegetation and moisture availability present in the rocky escarpments found in Northern Benin and Southeastern Burkina Faso. Historically these sites are important in location for village choice and land use designation. These findings reinforce local cultural beliefs of the importance of vegetation for climate regulation and may provide support to local farmers for improving the resilience of natural resources and livelihood security.