Water Quality Retrieval from Landsat-9 (OLI-2) Imagery and Comparison to Sentinel-2

The Landsat series has marked the history of Earth observation by performing longest continuous imaging program from space. recent Landsat-9 carrying Operational Land Imager 2 (OLI-2) captures a higher dynamic range than sensors aboard Landsat-8 or Sentinel-2 (14-bit vs. 12-bit) that can potentially push forward frontiers aquatic remote sensing. This potential stems enhanced radiometric resolution OLI-2, providing sensitivity over water bodies are usually low-reflective. study performs an initial assessment on retrieving quality parameters imagery based both physics-based and machine learning modeling. concentration chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) total suspended matter (TSM) retrieved inversion in four Italian lakes encompassing oligo to eutrophic conditions. A neural network-based regression model is also employed derive Chl-a San Francisco Bay. We perform consistency analysis between constituents derived near-simultaneous imagery. TSM retrievals validated using situ matchups. results indicate relatively high among products Sentinel-2. However, constituent maps show less grainy noise, matchup validation indicates accuracies obtained (e.g., R2 0.89) compared (R2 = 0.71). improved retrieval be attributed signal-to-noise (SNR) enabled wider OLI-2. performed image-based SNR estimation confirms this assumption.