Turbidity and secchi disc depth with sentinel-2 in different trophic status reservoirs at the comunidad valenciana

Abstract

Transparency or turbidity is one of the main indicators in studies of water quality using remote sensing. Transparency can be measured in situ through the Secchi disc depth (SD), and turbidity using a turbidimeter. In recent decades, different relationships between bands from different remote sensing sensors have been used for the estimation of these variables. In this paper, several indices and spectral bands have been calibrated in order to estimate transparency from Sentinel-2 (S2) images from field data, obtained throughout 2017 and 2018 in Júcar basin reservoirs with a great variety of trophic states. Three atmospheric correction methods developed for waters have been applied to the S2 level L1C images taken at the same day as the field data: Polymer, C2RCC and C2X. From the spectra obtained from S2 and the SD field data, it has been found that the smallest error is obtained with the images atmospherically corrected with Polymer and a potential adjustment of the reflectivities’ ratio of the blue and green bands (R490/R560), which allow the estimation of SD with a relative error of 13%. Also the C2X method presents good adjustment with the same bands ratio, although with a greater error, while the correction C2RCC shows the worst correlation. The relationship between SD (in m) and turbidity (in NTU) has also been obtained, which provides an operational method for estimating turbidity with S2. The relationship for the different reservoirs between SD and chlorophyll-a concentration, suspended solids and dissolved organic matter, is also shown.