Remotely Sensed Retrieval of Extreme High Surface Suspended Sediment Concentration in the Yellow River Estuary from 1996 to 2017

Remotely sensed retrieval provides an alternative for surface suspended sediment concentration (SSC) monitoring with its advantages of wide area survey and real-time monitoring. In situ measurements were precise, however, they were inherently accidental, both in time and space. Extreme high SSC in shoal remains hard to be mapped. Moreover, in situ measurements were of a normal distribution but discontinuous. This paper tried to retrieval SSC in the Yellow River estuary, especially in the Yellow River Mouth characterized by extreme high SSC. The inherent optical property of SSC was precisely obtained based on a control experiment. A calibration model was then developed based on a band ratio (R(820)/R(490)), and was used in SSC mapping in the Yellow River estuary. The suspended sediment generally distributed in a strip pattern parallel to the coast in the northern part of the Yellow River Delta. SSC was high near the current Yellow River estuary. SSC contours in the southwest of Laizhou Bay were elliptical, with the highest SSC in the elliptical center and the northwest-southeast trend in the long axis.