Using remote sensing satellites for water quality monitoring in the UAE

The GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries lack adequate freshwater availability. Hence, most of the fresh water is obtained from seawater desalination. Because seawater is the main source of fresh water and can be polluted by human and non human activities, it needs to be continuously protected and monitored. The objective of this paper is to highlight the development of an automated approach for monitoring the water quality in the UAE. Visible and thermal measurements provided by MODIS (MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer) sensors on board of Terra and Aqua satellites are used in this project. Medium resolution data of MODIS will be complemented with very high resolution data from the newly launched satellite DubaiSat-1 (DS-1). The project deals with monitoring of pollution caused by desalination plants, red-tide and oil spills.