The Gross Primary Production (GPP) assessment and monitoring by remote sensing is of crucial importance in the climate changes studies given its direct connection to the effectively extracted carbon from the atmosphere by numerous earth ecosystems. The present work aims to assess the GPP in a Brazilian semi-arid irrigated area, using TM - Landsat 5 images and complementary surface meteorological data. Cloudless TM images were acquired from the year 2008 and were used to obtain daily GPP for five selected days. This model expresses GPP as a function of the absorbed photosynthetic active radiation and the efficiency of light use by vegetation. A comparison is made between the obtained results with TM images and GPP from MOD17A2. The difference between GPP values obtained by the two techniques resulted in an Average Absolute Difference - AAD of 0.91 g C m-2 dia-1, an Average Percentage Difference - APD of 11.82% and Root Square Mean Difference - RSMD of 1.12 g C m-2 dia-1. The integration of the GPP over the irrigated São Gonçalo areas, during the five selected days, resulted in a carbon fixation between 200.3 and 295.3 ton C day-1.
sequester of carbon; net radiation; Landsat 5; NDVI; light use efficiency
