Remote Sensing as a Basic Toolbox for Monitoring Water Quality Parameters and as a System of Surveillance of Cyanobacterial Harmful Algae Blooms (SCyanoHABs)

Remote sensing has been used from the 80´ s to study inland water quality. However, it was not until the beginning of the 21st century that MERIS started to acquire imagery with a very good temporal, radiometric and spectral resolution and with a low spatial resolution, which allowed to develop a reliable imagery acquisition system so as to consider remote sensing as an inland water management tool. This paper presents the methodology developed, from the field data acquisition with which to build a freshwater spectral library and the study of different atmospheric correction systems for MERIS imagery, to the development of algorithms to determine Chlorophyll a [Cla] and phycocyanin [PC] concentrations and bloom sites. All these algorithms allow to determine water eutrophic and ecological states, apart from generating surveillance maps of toxic cianobacteria.