Water

  • Updated

Drone observations offer a way to derive information about the water quality.

MAPEO offers a workflow to obtain geo-referenced images with corrected quantitative values representative for the water column. This allows to derive information such as, but not limited to, turbidity or chlorophyll concentrations.

The water case has some specific challenges that are addressed in MAPEO. Some of these issues are listed below:

  • Water bodies often look dark on images resulting in a much lower signal-to-noise ratio compared to land applications.
  • The interaction of the incoming light with the atmosphere just above the water surface might have a major influence (sky glint). Luckily, this can be modelled through a modified version of VITO’s atmospheric correction algorithm iCOR (iCOR4Drones).
  • The water surface acts as a mirror (sun glint). Therefore, a well-adapted flight protocol and hardware setup is indispensable.
  • The water column is often a dynamic environment subjected to e.g. current or tide resulting in a rapidly changing scene under investigation

The MAPEO products, specific for water applications are:

  • True colour RGB image
  • Water-leaving reflectance (intermediate product): calibrated product corrected for atmospheric and air-interface effects
  • Turbidity
  • Suspended sediment concentration
  • Chlorophyll-a concentration

If you don't see a specific product you are interested in here, please contact the MAPEO sales team for further options.