Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key process linking surface and atmospheric energy budgets, yet its drivers and patterns across wetlandscapes are poorly understood worldwide. Here we assess the ET dynamics in 12 wetland complexes across South America, revealing major differences under temperate, tropical, and equatorial climates. While net radiation is a dominant driver of ET seasonality in most environments, flooding also contributes strongly to ET in tropical and equatorial wetlands, especially in meeting the evaporative demand. Moreover, significant water losses through wetlands and ET differences between wetlands and uplands occur in temperate, more water-limited environments and in highly flooded areas such as the Pantanal, where slow river flood propagation drives the ET dynamics. Finally, floodplain forests produce the greatest ET in all environments except the Amazon River floodplains, where upland forests sustain high rates year round. Our findings highlight the unique hydrological functioning and ecosystem services provided by wetlands on a continental scale.

During the last decades, the Amazon rainforest underwent uncontrolled exploitation that modified its environmental variables. The current paper analyzes the spatiotemporal dynamics of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), leaf area index (LAI), and surface albedo, and temperature in two different vegetation covers, preserved and deforested areas. We calculated the remote-sensing products using Landsat 5 TM images obtained during the dry season 1984, 1991, 2000, and 2011 of the central region of the State of Rondônia, Brazil. The results showed a reduction of vegetation indexes NDVI ($∼0.70$ in 1984 to $∼0.27$ in 2011) and LAI ($∼1.8$ in 1984 to $∼0.3$ in 2011), with an increase of surface albedo (0.12 in 1984 to 0.20 in 2011) and temperature ($∼24°C$ in 1984 to 30°C in 2011) as the effect of the rainforest converted in grassland during the study period. No changes in any variables were observed in the protected area. Forest conversion into grassland resulted in a decrease of 69% in NDVI and 110% in LAI and a rise of 59% and 24% in albedo and surface temperature, respectively.

The Cerrado is a heterogeneous landscape which is shrinking due to deforestation, giving rise to managed ecosystems. The land cover changes alter net radiation (Rn), which determines the quantity of available energy to the energy balance partition. The objectives of this study were (1) to determine the spatial pattern of the vegetation indices, albedo, and land surface temperature (LST) and (2) to evaluate the Rn estimated by Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) images over Cerrado areas in the Upper Paraguay River Basin. We estimated the vegetation indices, albedo, LST, and Rn of five selected vegetation types. The values estimated by Landsat 5 TM images had seasonal variations with higher values of the vegetation indices and lower values of the albedo and the LST during the wet season. The riparian and Cerrado strictu sensu had higher values of vegetation indices and lower albedo and LST than grasslands. The Rn estimated by Landsat 5 TM images was highly correlated with the measured Rn. The Rn had a seasonal pattern, following the solar radiation, with higher values during the wet season and varied spatially with higher values in the riparian forest and Cerrado strictu sensu and lower in the grasslands. This study showed the applicability of the Landsat 5 TM images to estimate Rn, which can help to understand the heterogeneity in the study area.