ISSN 2070-7401 (Print), ISSN 2411-0280 (Online)
Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa
CURRENT PROBLEMS IN REMOTE SENSING OF THE EARTH FROM SPACE

  

Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa, 2015, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 158-170

Spectral features of cyanobacterial bloom in the Baltic Sea from MODIS data

G.S. Karabashev1 , M.A. Evdoshenko1 
1 P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology RAS, Moscow, Russia
The spectral features of cyanobacteria blooms in the Baltic Sea are examined based on the MODIS data reprocessed in 2009–2010. For reference, we used the data of same sensor acquired in the Black Sea during the most powerful blooming of coccolithophores in the Black Sea in 2012. They are deprived of accessory pigments of cyanobacteria, and surpass the latter in intensity of manifestations of blooming in the field of the backscattered solar radiation. The aquatic areas and time of satellite observations has been chosen according to published results of determinations of phytoplankton abundance in the upper layer of the seas. In addition to the estimates of spectral reflectance Rrs of water surface, two derivative characteristics served as new satellite indicators of blooms: the color index Cx = 100×Rrs(667)/Rrs(555)% as an index of steepness of the longwave wing of the Rrs spectrum and the estimates of wavelength Lmax of maximum Rrs calculated by means of cubic spline interpolation of Rrs at wavelengths 469, 488, 531, 547, and 555 nm. The variability of these characteristics was compared during blooms in the Black and Baltic Seas on equal spatial scales at Rrs levels of one and the same range. Classification of Rrs spectra using the K-means method was applied to reveal the relation of their shape and amplitude to the development of blooming. We demonstrate that the reflectance spectrum of the Baltic Sea exhibits changes during the cyanobacterial bloom which are hypothetically due to the accessory pigments of cyanobacteria and/or to the excretion of dissolved organic matter by the latter. The specificity of these changes is corroborated by the fact that they are lacking in the case of bloom of the coccolithophores. Possibilities of remote diagnostics of cyanobacteria blooms on the basis of spectral effects discovered are discussed.
Keywords: cyanobacterial blooming, Baltic Sea, reflectance spectrum, MODIS
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