Evaluation of optical remote sensing to estimate actual evapotranspiration and canopy conductance

► We evaluated 3 approaches to estimate evapotranspiration from MODIS vegetation data. ► Estimation via canopy conductance (Gc) predicted flux tower data best. ► Greenness-related indices produced better results than LAI or FPAR products. ► Among the best 3 indices, none was uniformly better across land cover types. ► Gc estimates are provided as look-up tables and global grids for use in models.