Estuaries around the world, including Long Island Sound and Chesapeake Bay, have severe water quality problems. Scientific monitoring of these large water bodies can be time consuming and expensive. By utilizing freely available satellite imagery to build upon existing monitoring techniques, the temporal and spatial resolution of water quality data can be increased with relatively little additional time or effort.
This research concerns methods for isolating and quantifying sediment impaired waters and related water quality indicators in MODIS satellite images. A comparison of two water bodies - Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound - will be used to determine applicability of the techniques to distinct water bodies. Existing data from monitoring stations and water quality measuring cruises will be used to determine the accuracy of such methods. The research will also investigate methods for expanding such quantification over multiple time sets of images in an efficient manner.