Optical Remote Sensing of Shallow-Water Environmental Parameters: A Feasibility Study

A review of methods used for deriving seafloor reflectance and water diffuse attenuation form remotely sensed data is conducted. Emphasis is made on inverse methods applied to remote sensing of ocean properties. Then an inverse scheme for the retrieval of optically active components in coastal shallow waters is described and validated through simulation. The proposed method is based on a synthetic reflectance database and an optimization scheme. A sensitivity analysis is performed. It shows that the method is robust, even when applied to extreme environmental conditions, given that the database covers the optical properties of the water body under consideration.