Operational remote sensing mapping of estuarine suspended sediment concentrations (ORMES)

Within the ORMES project a service is developed which provides suspended sediment maps from remote sensing images in an efficient way. Our main test site is a part of the Belgian Scheldt Estuary near Antwerp. A reliable semi-empirical algorithm has been developed to derive near-surface suspended matter maps in an operational way. This algorithm is applied to a series of hyperspectral airborne data obtained at different stages of the tidal cycle. The produced TSM maps showed good agreement with known variations of the suspended sediment content over the tidal cycle: maximum turbidity around high water and gradual settling of the sediment in the succeeding slack water. The cross-river differences in TSM matched well the variation measured at previous field campaigns.