New opportunities and challenges for high resolution remote sensing of water colour

RUDDICK, K.; NECHAD, B.; DOGLIOTTI, A.I.; VAN DER ZANDE, D.; VANHELLEMONT, Q.; PRINGLE, N.

Victoria

Conferencia; Ocean Optics XXIII Conference; 2016

The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the applications of optical remotesensing for turbid coastal and inland waters, driven largely by the availability of free, highquality and high resolution satellite data from Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2. It is now possibleto regularly and systematically map the distribution and dynamics of suspended particlesand certain impacts of human activities close to shore and inside ports, estuaries andinland waters. Commercial missions such as Pléiades, Worldview and Rapideye also offernew possibilities for remote sensing of aquatic processes at even higher spatial resolutions(~1m). The exploitation of such data brings new algorithmic challenges and opportunitiesincluding: the use of SWIR bands for atmospheric correction in turbid waters; the challengeof lower signal:noise specifications and possible spatial binning techniques; the exploitationof extremely high resolution panchromatic bands; the assessment of the impact of sub-pixelscale effects for medium resolution ocean colour missions; the need to remove/filtersunglint and surface wave effects; the possibility to resolve patchy distributions (suspendedmatter, surface foam, algal blooms, floating vegetation, etc.); problems of datacontamination by cloud and object shadows; and the validation of narrow swath sensors.The state of the art of high resolution remote sensing of water colour is reviewed here andthe many emerging opportunities and algorithmic challenges are outlined using examplesfrom Landsat-8, Sentinel-2 and Pléiades.