Water Quality Monitoring @ DLR
01 November 2021
MODIS-based Global Water Quality Assessment
This project is a work contract with the DLR, in which I explored the potential of MODIS, a multispectral sensor with daily resolution, in evaluating global inland water quality. Despite extensive research, many developed spectral indices fail to retrieve water quality information consistently beyond the local scale due to atmospheric influences. This prototyping project aims to fill this gap and to evaluate the potential of a global assessment using MODIS imagery.
It tests documented research approaches using Google Earth Engine and examines water quality in two dimensions: turbidity and eutrophication. Results are validated globally in lakes and rivers, also in Tai Lake, China, where field data from the research stations are available. The output of this project is a decision tree classifier, where water pixels are classified into five classes in each dimension.
