Exploring the relationship between Landsat-8/OLI remote sensing reflectance and optically active components in the surface water at the UHE Maua/PR

The quality and quantity of water available for both economic growth and life sustainability is one of the major challenges for the sustainable development in the 21st century. This challenge requires research focused on the monitoring of time changes in water properties in several spatial scales. Satellite remote sensing has been applied as an alternative for providing information on optically active components, which act as indicators of water quality. Satellite remote sensing performance, however, varies from one aquatic system to another depending on several factors, such as size, depth, optical properties. This study, therefore, aims to explore the viability of applying remote sensing for monitoring the UHE Mauá reservoir, located in Paraná State. For that, an experiment was carried out to obtain water samples at 24 random samples distributed into the reservoir. Those samples were analyzed in laboratory and optically active components, namely, total suspended solids (TSS) and chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentration determined. Surface remote sensing reflectance provided by Landsat/OLI images almost concurrently to satellite overpass was computed for each sample in order to assess the best set of spectral bands and band combinations for estimating the concentrations of TSS and Chl-a. Results indicate that Chl-a was the optically active component spanning the widest range of variability in the Mauá reservoir and having the highest potential to be estimated using remote sensing OLI band 3 (green) explained more than 70 % in chlorophyll-a concentration.