Satellite remote sensing for water quality assessment and monitoring-an overview on current concepts, deficits and future tasks

Abstract

The aim of this study is to give an overview of the current state of monitoring water quality issues and the application experience with the approaches provided by using satellite remote sensing as an effective monitoring tool for such studies. It is pointed out that the current in-situ techniques must be replaced by satellite remote sensing techniques due to their cost effectiveness and benefits of providing synoptic coverage of the area under investigation. Today satellite remote sensing can provide much needed information-for example, on some aspects of water quality where access is difficult or where a large area needs to be surveyed and the cost of a ground survey would be too high. Satellite Remote Sensing was found to be a valuable tool of assessing multi-temporal changes, spatial variations and synoptic coverage of water quality as described in this paper by citing the example of the Cyprus Island in which a Landsat TM or ETM image covers almost the entire island. Indeed, the benefit of using only one snapshot and assessing water quality for all the inland water bodies is highlighted.