Comparison of bathymetric estimation using different satellite images in coastal sea waters

Abstract

Bathymetric estimation can be obtained from multispectral satellite images for shallow waters. The method is based on the rotation of a pair of spectral bands. One of the resulting images is depth-dependent. Therefore several pixels corresponding to different depths are required to numerically evaluate the linear relation between the pixel values and the real depth for a training area. The aim of this study is to compare, for one bathymetric estimation method and one mesotrophic site, the results of depth estimation with a large panel of satellite and aerial images: CASI, QUICKBIRD, CHRIS PROBA, ETM, HYPERION and MeRIS. For each image the pair of spectral bands chosen to compute the bathymetry has been optimized. Error on depth estimation has been computed on two regions of the image: the training area and a validation area. This comparison is discussed to identify the influence of image parameters (spectral bands, S/N ratio, spatial resolution, and quantization) on the bathymetric results and to propose the most adapted image parameters for bathymetric estimation. For validation purposes, we compared the results obtained with a CASI image matching the optimized parameters in an oligotrophic site in the Red Sea.

Acknowledgment

We are grateful to the European Space Agency for providing the ENVISAT data used in this study (project AOE.822).