A UNITED MODEL FOR QUANTITATIVE REMOTE-SENSING OF SUSPENDED SEDIMENT CONCENTRATION

A remote sensing technique has been developed for quickly detecting su spended sediment concentration and monitoring the transport and deposi tion of suspended sediment in a large estuary area. There is an agreem ent that the best wave band to analyse suspended sediment concentratio n is 0.6-0.8 mum (MSS 5 and TM 3 for Landsat), but it is suggested tha t there is a divergence between which model is used to study the suspe nded sediment best. This paper presents a unified model for a quantita tive approach to suspended sediment concentration using remote sensing . The comparison between various models with field investigation data and published data has shown that the unified model has a higher corre lation and precision than most popular models used currently. The auth or illustrates that the logarithm model is flawed when suspended sedim ent concentration is high. The unified model has been applied to the q uantitative remote sensing of suspended sediment in Lingdingyang, the Pearl River estuary (the biggest river in South China). Further improv ement to the unified model with TM3/TM5 ratio technique has also been proposed to minimize the background influences (atmospheric and solar effects). Results show that the improved unified model has more advant ages than other models which usually need a large number of field data each time they are used. The improved united model can be applied to a global scale after its parameters are classified according to differ ent regions.