Towards a unified approach for remote estimation of chlorophyll‐a in both terrestrial vegetation and turbid productive waters

Abstract

In this study we tested the applicability of a method, originally developed for terrestrial plant leaves, to retrieve chlorophyll‐a concentrations from reflectance spectra of turbid productive waters. We tuned the conceptual model according to the optical characteristics of the aquatic medium, and accurately predicted chlorophyll‐a concentrations in water bodies over a wide range of optical conditions. Our results provide evidence that this technique may be considered as a general solution, independent of the type of medium, for assessing chlorophyll concentration in optically deep media using remotely sensed data.