Assessing water quality in the northern Adriatic Sea from HICO™ data

Abstract

This letter focuses on water-quality estimation in the northern Adriatic Sea using physically-based methods applied to image obtained with the Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO™). Optical properties of atmosphere and water were synchronously measured to parameterise such methods. HICO™-derived maps of chlorophyll-a (chl-a) and suspended particulate matter (SPM) indicated low values, in the range of 0–3 mg m−3 and 0–4 g m−3, respectively, correlating significantly with field data (R2 = 0.71 for chl-a and R2 = 0.85 for SPM). The results, on analysis, identify clear waters in the open sea and moderately turbid waters near the coast due to river sediment discharge and organic matter from coastal lagoons. These findings support the use of HICO™ data to assess water-quality parameters in coastal zones and suggest the feasibility of integrating them with future-generation space-borne hyperspectral images.