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A canopy of plants may become a vital component of advanced controlled ecological life support systems (CELSS). The interactions of the canopy with its environment need to be modeled so that designers can properly assess alternate configurations and operating strategies. Collective behavior of an entire canopy can sometimes be more expeditiously modeled than microscopic processes while preserving the robustness of the model for analysis of a CELSS. Water transpiration is a particularly important canopy process for which it is possible to link underlying microscopic processes and arrive at a description of canopy-level aggregated behavior. The underlying fundamental processes driving transpiration are relatively well understood. Unfortunately, the usual characterization of transpiration relies on parameters such as stomatal and boundary layer conductivities that are not directly measurable in typical CELSS designs.