Mapping of Total Suspended Solid from Inherent Optical Properties using Optical Model

Environmental monitoring through the method of traditional ship sampling is time consuming and requires a high survey cost. An investigation has been conducted to test the feasibility of using OceanSat-2 for estimating Total Suspended Solid (TSS) in the coastal waters of Penang island, Malaysia. The proposed algorithm is based on the reflectance model that is a function of the inherent optical properties of water, which can be related to its constituent's concentrations. Water samples were collected simultaneously with the satellite image acquisition and later analyzed in the laboratory. Water sample's locations were determined by using a handheld GPS. A simple atmospheric correction, namely darkest pixel technique was performed in this study. The pixel with the lowest value for each band was selected as the darkest pixel. The digital numbers for each band corresponding to the sea-truth locations were extracted and then converted into radiance values and reflectance values. The accuracies of algorithms was also investigated based on the observations of correlation coefficient (R) and root-mean-square deviations (RMS) with the sea-truth data. This algorithm was then used to map the TSS concentration over Penang, Malaysia. This study indicates that TSS mapping can be carried out using remote sensing technique of the satellite digital photography system over Penang, Malaysia.