Coastal coverage of ESA’ Sentinel 2 mission

Abstract

Climatologic and anthropogenic pressures in coastal areas affect the coastal zone at different scales. With the development of new missions in open-access, satellites now represent an attractive solution for a broad public to capture local-scale coastal impacts at large scales. Here, the capability of the Sentinel 2 constellation to cover coastal areas and measure coastal processes –physical and biological. We show that Sentinel 2 enables high-frequency measurements across the globe. Cloud coverage at higher latitudes is overcome by decrease revisit time-intervals. Only around the equator, the longest revisit intervals and high cloud cover probability limits coastal measurements there. Sentinel 2 based methods are capable of estimating Digital Elevation Models for mid- to high-latitude coastal zones and sporadic spots for lower latitudes where 2 orbit swaths overlap. For the majority of the world’s coastal bathymetries can be obtained with the Sentinel 2 imagery surpassing the depth of closure (beyond this offshore limit sediment transport is limited). Only in sheltered areas, wave-based bathymetry inversion is limited but at these areas inversion through colouring (light penetration) prevails. This works shows that Sentinel 2 enables coastal monitoring as never before, large spatial scale with revisits of a few days at most of the world.