Removing of Sediment and Bottom Reflectance Contribution from MODIS Imagery over Bright Coastal Water (original) (raw)

Abstract: Remote sensing image acquired over a turbid coastal area shows high reflectance in green and red wavelengths. The heightened of reflectance in these wavelengths are due to the contribution of sediment and bottom reflectance in the water and the present of aerosol in the atmosphere over that area. In this paper a simple method to remove sediment and bottom reflectance contribution from remote sensing data over turbid coastal waters for MODIS 0.55, 0.66 and 0.86 μm channels is proposed. We utilized first seven MODIS solar channels centered at 0.47, 0.55, 0.66, 0.86, 1.24, 1.64 and 2.13 μm originally designed for remote sensing over land and cloud properties. This algorithm is based on the excess reflectance at 0.55, 0.66 and 0.87 μm wavelength using the power law model that can be associated to the presence of sediment. The excess value of the reflectance was discarded, to obtain the atmospheric contribution in the data. The sample results from applications of the algorithm to several MODIS datasets acquired over the Gulf of Martaban were presented. This study shows that the sediment and bottom reflectance that influence remote sensing data over turbid coastal water are successfully removed. Key words: MODIS, remote sensing, sediment, power law, turbid water.