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Land-use/land-cover drives variation in the specific inherent optical properties of estuaries
Citation:
Le, C., J. Lehrter, B. Schaeffer, C. Hu, H. MacIntyre, Jim Hagy, AND D. Beddick. Land-use/land-cover drives variation in the specific inherent optical properties of estuaries. Presented at AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 08 - 13, 2013.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose is to provide a summary overview of the scientific achievements and the use of remote sensing products in water quality decision-making from our NASA funded project
Description:
Changes in land-use/land-cover (LULC) can impact the exports of optically and biogeochemically active constituents to estuaries. Specific inherent optical properties (SIOPs) of estuarine optically active constituents (OACs) are directly related to the composition of the OACs, and are important inputs for semi-analytical ocean color remote sensing algorithms. Knowledge of the relationship between LULC and SIOPs may thus help us to better understand how LULC changes affect important ecological endpoints in estuaries, and to optimize local ocean color remote sensing algorithms for retrievals of water quality parameters. Using data from six watershed-estuarine systems around the northeast coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the relationships between LULC and SIOPs were analyzed in this study. The results showed that LULC changes significantly affected the SIOPs in the six systems by influencing phytoplankton cell size, organic particle concentration, and the composition of CDOM in the estuaries. To our knowledge this is the first time that SIOPs of estuaries are reported to be significantly correlated to LULC changes. The strong relationships between SIOPs and LULC implied that the variation of SIOPs may be predictable in different systems with knowledge of LULC, and such predicted SIOPs may reduce uncertainties significantly in the remotely estimated water quality parameters for optically complex estuaries.