Empirical Modeling and Its Applications. Chapter 2: The Empirical Models to Correct Water Column Effects for Optically Shallow Water

Abstract

Seagrass as one of the blue carbon sinks plays an important role in environment, and it can be tracked remotely in the optically shallow water. Usually the signals of seagrass are weak which can be confused with the water column. The chapter will offer a model to simulate the propagation of light. The model can be used to improve the accuracy of seagrass mapping. Based on the in situ data, we found that the appropriate wavebands for seagrass mapping generally lie between 500–630 nm and 680–710 nm as well. In addition, a strong relationship between the reflectance value at 715 nm and LAI was found with a correlation coefficient of 0.99. The chapter provided an improved algorithm to retrieve bottom reflectance and map the bottom types. That would be meaningful for management and preservation of coastal marine resources.