Global chlorophyll-a concentration estimation from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer using convolutional neural networks

The accurate estimation of global chlorophyll-a (Chla) concentration from the large remote sensing data in a timely manner is crucial for supporting various applications. Moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) is one of the most widely used earth observation data sources, which has the characteristics of global coverage, high spectral resolution, and short revisit period. So the estimation of global Chla concentration from MODIS imagery in a fast and accurate manner is significant. Nevertheless, the estimation of Chla concentration from MODIS using traditional machine learning approaches is challenging due to their limited modeling capability to capture the complex relationship between MODIS spatial-spectral observations and the Chla concentration, and also their low computational efficiency to address large MODIS data in a timely manner. We, therefore, explore the potential of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for Chla concentration estimation from MODIS imagery. The Ocean Color Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI) Chla concentration image is used as ground truth because it is a well-recognized Chla concentration product that is produced by assimilating different satellite data through a complex data processing steps. A total of 12 monthly OC-CCI global Chla concentration maps and the associated MODIS images are used to investigate the CNN approach using a cross-validation approach. The classical machine learning approach, i.e., the supported vector regression (SVR), is used to compare with the proposed CNN approach. Comparing with the SVR, the CNN performs better with the mean log root-mean-square error and R 2 of being 0.129 and 0.901, respectively, indicating that using the MODIS images alone, the CNN approach can achieve results that is close to the OC-CCI Chla concentration images. These results demonstrate that CNNs may provide Chla concentration images that are reliable, stable and timely, and as such CNN constitutes a useful technique for operational Chla concentration estimation from large MODIS data. (C) The Authors.