Satellite remote sensing of water turbidity in Alqueva reservoir

Abstract

The quality control and monitoring of surface freshwaters is crucial, since some of these water masses constitute essential renewable water resources for a variety of purposes. The water turbidity is related with extinction of light in water and consequently with thermal vertical structure of the lakes, which in turn plays an important role in autochthonous primary production. Recently [3] developed a method to retrieve surface freshwater biological parameters (chlorophyll a and cyanobacteria) concentrations over Alqueva reservoir (south of Portugal) from MERIS satellite data, aiming at providing full spatial coverage and continuous monitoring of these parameters that affect the water quality. The methodology is now adapted and presented here to obtain a new empirical algorithm allowing retrieving the water turbidity of the same reservoir, which is important for the estimation of water extinction coefficients.