Estimation of chlorophyll-a concentration in coastal waters with HJ-1A HSI data using a three-band bio-optical model and validation

Abstract

Accurate assessment of phytoplankton chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentration in turbid waters by means of remote sensing is challenging because of the optical complexity of case 2 waters. We applied a bio-optical model of the form [R–1(λ1) – R–1(λ2)](λ3), where R(λi) is the remote-sensing reflectance at wavelength λi, to estimate chl-a concentration in coastal waters. The objectives of this article are (1) to validate the three-band bio-optical model using a data set collected in coastal waters, (2) to evaluate the extent to which the three-band bio-optical model could be applied to the spectral radiometer (SR) ISI921VF-512T data and the hyperspectral imager (HSI) data on board the Chinese HJ-1A satellite, (3) to evaluate the application prospects of HJ-1A HSI data in case 2 waters chl-a concentration mapping. The three-band model was calibrated using three SR spectral bands (λ1 = 664.9 nm, λ2 = 706.54 nm, and λ3 = 737.33 nm) and three HJ-1A HSI spectral bands (λ1 = 637.725 nm, λ2 = 711.495 nm, and λ3 = 753.750 nm). We assessed the accuracy of chl-a prediction with 21 in situ sample plots. Chl-a predicted by SR data was strongly correlated with observed chl-a (R2 = 0.93, root mean square error (RMSE) = 0.48 mg m–3, coefficient of variation (CV) (RMSE/mean(chl-amea)) = 3.72%). Chl-a predicted by HJ-1A HSI data was also closely correlated with observed chl-a (R2 = 0.78, RMSE = 0.45 mg m–3, CV (RMSE/mean(chl-amea)) = 7.51%). These findings demonstrate that the HJ-1A HSI data are promising for quantitative monitoring of chl-a in coastal case-2 waters.