Reflectance sensitivity to solid suspended sediment stratification in coastal water and inversion: a case study

A two-flow radiative transfer model is used to study the sensitivity of spe ctral reflectance to variations of solid suspended matter (SSM) concentrati on with depth. Examples are given of the variations of reflectance spectra with depth profiles of SSM. We developed an inversion method for the model restricted to the simple case of a two-layer ocean. The method was tested o n various documented experimental data. A majority of stratified cases were detected by the method. Reasonably good estimates of the mean sediment con centration of the upper layer were obtained. Only the order of magnitude of the thickness of the upper layer and the mean concentration of the lower l ayer were recovered. The influence of chlorophyll (CHL) concentration profi le on reflectance spectra was found to be weak for such high SSM concentrat ions. Our inverse algorithm, of low computational cost, could be envisaged in a remote-sensing perspective provided complementary studies. (C) 2001 El sevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.