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A bare-soil surface resistance parameter significantly improved the fit of a numerical model of heat and moisture flow in soils to 3 days of field measurements. The resistance removed a positive bias from the model estimates of daily cumulative evaporation on days with minimum surface soil moisture (0 to 0.5 cm) less than about 10% by volume. The model calibration was also made more stable. Saturated hydraulic conductivity and surface roughness were estimated by fitting the model to daily maximum surface temperature and minimum soil moisture. Without the surface resistance parameter, their values had to be changed from day to day to fit the surface measurements, though their day-today changes were minimal when surface resistance was included. A procedure is outlined to estimate the resistance as a function of soil moisture when independent measurements of the latent heat flux are available.
Camillo et al. (Sat,) studied this question.