INTEGRATED USE OF MERIS AND OTHER EO DATA FOR WATER QUALITY AND RED TIDE MONITORING ALONG UNITED ARAB EMIRATES COASTS

摘要

Coastal zones host a large percentage of global population and economical and productive activities and are in need of a constant monitoring. The C-wams project is focused at implementing a suite EO services targeting two growing sectors: Waste Water Treatment and Desalination plants. The coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosts some of the largest desalination plants in the world and their operation can affect and be affected by the status of the WQ near the coast: the local phenomenon known as Red Tide caused increasing damages in the last 4 years. Some actors are involved in this respect in the Persian gulf, among them the Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi (EAD). In UAE an historical study-case is being performed aimed at identifying Red Tide events using MERIS images, integrating them with other medium and higher resolution data. The present work describes its scenario and the preliminary results obtained.