Abstract: Evapotranspiration is the primary way of groundwater discharge in the north of the Ordos basin and an important content of water resource assessments. In order to calculate the evapotranspiration amount and provide parameters for the groundwater numerical model, the remote sensing (RS) approach was used for calculation. By adopting the NOAA/AVHRR data from NASA, United States, and according to the model of SEBS, the author calculated the daily evapotranspiration in the study area, and used the observation data from weather stations to calibrate the results of RS calculation and finally got the total yearly evapotranspiration amount. This method promotes evapotranspiration calculation by RS from research to application.