Remote Sensing Estimation of Suspended Sediment Concentrations in Highly Turbid Inland River Waters: An Example from the Lower Jinsha Tributary, Yunnan, China

摘要

Algorithms for estimating total suspended sediment concentration from water reflectance spectra of highly turbid inland river water are developed in this study. In one of the retrieval method, the ratio of reflectance at 800 nm and 500 nm wavelength bands are fitted to an empirical relation. In a second method, the whole spectrum is fitted to a water reflectance model to retrieve the sediment backscattering coefficient at 550 nm. The sediment concentration is then calculated using a linear equation obtained by regression of field measurements with the fitted backscattering coefficient. The algorithms are expected to be applicable to high resolution satellite data with a limited number of bands such as Landsat and SPOT.