DECO, Danish Environmental monototing of COastal waters. Project no.: 1221

Project no.: 1221.
The traditional monotoring of the Danish marine environment is currently based promarily on ship sampling/measurements. All the various monotoring programmes ranging from the traditional environmental ones to fisheries monotoring and monitoring of spills from off-shore constructions can benefit from the utilization of remote sensing data. The satellites provide a temporal and spatial coverage, which is unmatched by other existing techniques.
The current project will focus on environmental parameters (e.g. water quality parameters) unfluencing the optical, spectral signature of water (e.g. the reflectance of sun-light as a function of wavelenght) in the visible to near-infrared part of the spectrum. These parameters are phytoplankton, suspended sediments and yellow substances. In shallow waters also bottom-types and depths influence the recorded signal. Three levels of of simultaneous spectral measurements (in situ, airborn & spaceborn) will be included in order to make accurate correction for atmospheric and instrument specific distortions