Which Spectral Bands of WorldView-2 Are Useful in Remote Sensing of Water Depth? A Case Study in Coral Reefs

Abstract

Although visible bands of high-resolution multispectral imagery are used for bathymetry, the relative utility of different bands is poorly understood. Therefore, we evaluated the relative utility of the six visible bands of WorldView-2. We statistically selected the visible bands that gave the best accuracy under different situations, tallying how often each band was included in the best combination. The average frequency was greater than 50% for every band and differed between bands by only 17%. We conclude that all visible bands are useful for remote sensing of water depth, although the utility depends on the image and number of training pixels available.

Keywords:

• High-resolution satellite images
• bathymetry
• satellite image

Acknowledgements

Multibeam bathymetry data for Tinian Island was downloaded from the website of the National Geophysical Data Center of NOAA (URL: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/) and used as depth measurements corresponding to Image 5.