Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
4540916 | Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science | 2010 | 13 Pages |
Earth observation (EO) data are excellent tools for studying the quality and dynamic of estuarine and coastal waters. In this paper we propose a simplified remote sensing method to estimate aerosol reflectance and suspended particulate matter (SPM). We validated this method with in-situ measurements from two different locations: the Poyang Lake in China and the Kenyan Coastal waters. In the validation phase, we used match-up data from orbital ocean color (MERIS) and geostationary (SEVIRI) sensors. Both locations as well as both sensors gave consistent results. The R2 values between derived and measured SPM concentrations were >0.94 for MERIS and >0.7 for SEVIRI. The RMSE values of derived SPM concentrations were less than 3 and 5 g m−3 for MERIS and SEVIRI respectively. Our method derived realistic patterns of SPM dynamics in turbid waters and spatially un-correlated aerosol reflectance maps. The proposed method can be applied to derive either SPM concentrations or its backscattering coefficient.