16-Inland water quality monitoring using remote sensing data: Principles and Applications

Generally, inland water quality monitoring is performed by in situ data collection. However, this type of monitoring is costly and difficult to be performed in, mainly in remote areas, as the cost will be dependent on size/distances of the water bodies. Therefore, remote sensing techniques are a suitable option to estimate optically active constituents (i.e., water components that interact with electromagnetic radiation). That allows a high spatiotemporal coverage of inland waters optical diversity. In the last years, sensors like Landsat-8/OLI, Sentinel-2/MSI, CBERS-04A/WFI, Amazonia-1/WFI, Sentine-3/OLCI and PRISMA are presenting high quality water products. However, limitations still exist, mainly in the understanding of light interaction with water bodies due to the low water signal. Therefore, this course aims on presenting basic concepts of hydrologic optics (interaction of light and water, spectral behavior of optically active constituents), and image processing (atmospheric correction) that are necessary accurate inland water remote sensing applications