Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2010MA231B

Monitoring and Modeling Chromophoric Dissolved Organic Matter in Neponset River and Boston Harbor Using GIS and Hyperspectral Remote Sensing

Institute: Massachusetts
Year Established: 2010 Start Date: 2010-03-01 End Date: 2011-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $10,175

Principal Investigators: Qian Yu, Weining Zhu

Project Summary: Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a key factor for water quality and climate change, but the field survey is insufficient to monitor DOC over a large spatial scale. We propose to use CDOM inversion from hypersepctral satellite images to monitor DOC distribution and dynamics, given the correlation between CDOM and DOC. Our study site is the Neponset River and Boston Harbor regions. We will sample in situ CDOM and water above-surface spectrum data monthly in growing season. Based on the field data, we will improve and calibrate our radiative transfer based algorithm, QAA-E (Extended Quasi Analytical Algorithm), to inverse the ag440 (the absorption coefficients of CDOM at 440nm) from EO-1 Hyperion images. CDOM concentration (in the unit of QSU)is linearly related to ag440 very well and could be derived by empirical relationship. To understand the sources, degradation and transport of CDOM, we will also model the relationship between CDOM and major watershed and hydrological variables with GIS support, including vegetation cover and density, flow, soil type and precipitation. This proposed work will be an important prior study before it is extended to regional scale.