Continued Development of the Look-Up-Table (LUT) Methodology for Interpretation of Remotely Sensed Ocean Color Data

The overall goal of this work is to refine and validate a spectrum-matching and look-up-table (LUT) technique for rapidly inverting remotely sensed hyperspectral reflectances to extract environmental information such as water-column optical properties, bathymetry, and bottom classification. My colleagues at the Florida Environmental Research Institute and I are developing and evaluating techniques for the extraction of environmental information including water-column inherent optical properties (IOPs) and shallow-water bathymetry and bottom classification from remotely-sensed hyperspectral ocean-color spectra. We address the need for rapid, automated interpretation of hyperspectral imagery. The research issues center on development and evaluation of spectrum-matching algorithms, including the generation of confidence metrics for the retrieved information. The present work, which is just starting, continues investigations that were previously funded under a different contract (see the associated report for previous results). The on-going work will continue the evaluation, refinement, and optimization of the LUT technique including, in particular, applications to turbid coastal waters, inhomogeneous water columns, and optically deep waters.