Estimating turbidity and total suspended matter in the Adour River plume (South Bay of Biscay) using MODIS 250-m imagery

The Basque coastal waters (South Bay of Biscay) are directly influenced by the Adour River freshwater plume. The Adour outflow leads to important variations of suspended matter concentrations and turbidity, which in turn may affect biological productivity and water quality. This study aims at both developing specific algorithms and testing the efficiency of atmospherically corrected MODIS-Aqua 250-m surface reflectance product (MYD09) to map total suspended matter concentrations and turbidity within the Adour coastal region. First, regional empirical algorithms based on in-situ data were tested to retrieve the concentration of total suspended matter and turbidity from the remote sensing reflectance. Then, the respective sensitivity of MODIS surface reflectance bands 1 and 2 for water quality application was investigated as well as the quality of atmospheric corrections. Finally, selected algorithms were applied to the MYD09 product. The resulting 250-m resolution maps were then compared to 1000-m maps produced by IFREMER and comparisons between satellite measurements and in-situ sampling points were performed. Results show that MODIS-Aqua band 1 (620–670 nm) is appropriate for predicting turbidity and total suspended matter concentrations using polynomial regression models, whilst band 2 is unadapted. Comparison between total suspended matter concentration 250-m resolution maps and mineral suspended matter 1000-m maps (generated by IFREMER) produced consistent results. A high correlation was obtained between turbidity measured in-situ and turbidity retrieved from MODIS-Aqua satellite data.