Spectrometry of turbidity in surface water

The objective of this paper is to investigate how to measure turbidity of water using surface spectral reflectance. Spectral data from a reservoir were collected using a field spectroradiometer, which contains 512 spectral channels ranging from 350 to 1050 nm. Five replicate scans were taken at each sampling site with a total of 23 such sites selected. The results indicated that wind-induced whitecaps on the surface of water can cause higher overall reflectance and inconsistency among the replicate spectral measurements. As result, it was almost impossible to apply reflectance from any single wavelength to accurately estimate turbidity. It was found that the difference of reflectances between 710 and 720 nm is a better indicator of turbidity