Integrating Landsat-7 Imagery with Physics-based Models for Quantitative Mapping of Coastal Waters near River Discharges.

Remote sensing has traditionally been used to retrieve water constituents by establishing a relationship between in situ measured quantities and image-derived products. Motivated by the dramatically improved potential of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), this paper describes a different approach for water constituent retrieval where both thermal and visible spectral bands of the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) instrument on board Landsat-7 are utilized. In this effort, Landsat data is integrated with a 3D hydrodynamic model to obtain profiles of particles and dissolved matter in the near shore zone in the vicinity of two river discharges. The procedure is based upon performing many hydrodynamic simulations by adjusting input environmental/physical variables and generating Look-Up- Tables (LUTS). The best match, obtained using optimization, demonstrated an average root-mean-squared-error (RMSE) of 0.68 percent, i.e., 0.0068 reflectance units, calculated over the two river plumes. It is concluded that calibrating a physics-based model using the Landsat-7 imagery can provide a more lucid insight into the dynamics of spatially non-uniform waters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]