Introduction

Remote sensing using satellite and airborne sensors is a powerful, operational tool for environmental monitoring coastal zones. This technology can provide accurate, large-scale, synoptic environmental information essential for understanding and managing marine ecosystems. Satellite based monitoring in coastal areas allows a sustainable service provision without any direct HSE risks.

The usage of optical multi- or hyperspectral sensor data enables the assessment of in-water properties, such as suspended matter or phytoplankton concentration, benthic substrate type, vegetation composition, and bathymetry in (optically-)shallow waters.

SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) sensors allow monitoring of environmental parameters that are reflected at the water surface, like oil, wind or sea state. Also, water depth information is included here.

Sensors

Each satellite sensor has its own technical characteristics in terms of temporal, spatial, spectral, and radiometric resolution. Depending on specific requirements of a project, such as area size, availability or thematic specifications, multi- or hyperspectral detectors on space- or airborne platforms are applied.

The main optical multispectral sensors, currently used for aquatic and coastal remote sensing, are: MERIS, MODIS and RapidEye. The main SAR satellite sensors are: ASAR, ERS 1 / 2, COSMOS and TerraSAR-X.