Retrieval of water quality from China´s first satellite-based Hyperspectral Imager (HJ-1A HSI) data

On September 6, 2008, a Micro-satellite Constellation for Monitoring and Forecasting Environment and Disaster was successfully launched in China. This Micro-satellite Constellation includes two small satellites, Satellite-A (abbreviated as HJ-1A) and Satellite-B (abbreviated as HJ-1B). HJ-1A is installed with a Hyperspectral Imager (abbreviated as HSI), which is China´s first satellite-based hyperspectral remote sensor. The advantages of HJ-1A HSI is that is has high spectral resolution and wide swath, and therefore it has much potential in monitoring water quality of large-scale inland waters. To validate the application of HJ-1A HSI in monitoring water quality of large-scale inland waters, we used two scenes of HJ-1A HSI images to retrieve total suspended matter of Lake Taihu. Then we used the insitu measured data at a station in Lake Taihu to calculate the retrieved absolute error and relative error, which showed that the retrieved total suspended matter results were reasonable.