First Experiences with the Collection 1 Landsat 8 Aquatic Reflectance Product

Since the launch of Landsat 8, there has been a continuous effort to produce reliable ocean color (OC) products by taking advantage of the imager onboard. In 2020, a Collection 1 L8 Provisional Aquatic Reflectance product was released to the public to explore applications.



This study used a six year data record of L8 for development of a regionally tuned algorithm (RTA20) for estimating Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentrations around the complex coastal environment of Hong Kong. Results indicate that the newly released L8PAR product has a high potential for estimating the coastal water Chl-a concentrations with higher detail and higher accuracy than previously. The RTA20 algorithm developed outperformed previous algorithms.



This preliminary evaluation reveals that the OC algorithm can be used as an operational algorithm for L8 Chl-a product generation for global coastal areas while RTA20 can be used as a regional algorithm for the routine monitoring of Chl-a concentrations around the coastal areas of Hong Kong or for coastal areas with similar water quality elsewhere.

 

Read the research here: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/12/1938/htm