Feasibility study for lake water quality assessment using MIDORI AVNIR data

The Mecklenburg Lake District in Germany was used to verify MIDORI AVNIR´s potential for water quality assessment. By means of remote sensing, water quality can be assessed by estimating chlorophyll content. Chlorophyll shows spectral characteristics with relatively high reflectance in the green and near-infrared spectral region. Chlorophyll concentration is one parameter to estimate the trophic state of a lake and it can be related to the amount of algae in the water. Complementary data sets (CASI, AVNIR, IRS-1C PAN and LISS) and a spectral database acquired by a field spectrometer are available for the test site. In this study, AVNIR data are being evaluated regarding water quality. Relative chlorophyll concentration of the lakes is differentiated by techniques of linear spectral unmixing on atmospherically corrected data. Results are in accordance to field measurements. Even though it is not feasible to estimate absolute chlorophyll concentration using only 4 wavebands, groups of lakes with different states of bioproduction can be differentiated