POSTER Session 3

IMPROVING OPERATIONAL RIVER MONITORING THROUGH STRINGENT QUALITY CONTROL OF COMMERCIAL HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE IMAGERY

River systems pose unique challenges to operational water quality monitoring schemes. Satellite remote sensing has historically been of limited use due to spatial resolution constraints and/or low overpass frequency. In recent years, commercial satellite platforms have emerged as a promising complementary data source. The Planet SuperDove satellite constellation offers a daily revisit cycle at 3 meters spatial resolution, making it well-suited for timely water quality monitoring and point source pollution tracking in river systems. However, stringent quality control mechanisms are paramount to yield robust river water quality estimates from Planet SuperDove data streams. A dedicated river quality control scheme was developed based on the bio-optical inversion scheme 3C. This approach allows to flag and remove pixels affected by sun and sky glint, residual haze after atmospheric correction, bottom reflectance, adjacency effects, mixed vegetation pixels, and shading by surrounding topography. Turbidity time series were derived from SuperDove observations along the Klamath River (OR, CA), and validated against co-located USGS in situ measurements. High levels of correlation were achieved only after pixels flagged during quality control were removed. We discuss these results in the context of operational river monitoring networks in general, as well as the specific example of the ongoing Klamath River restoration project with its extreme turbidity flushes caused by upstream dam removals.

Philipp Grötsch, Gybe, [email protected]

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