Atmospheric correction for inland waters

Inland waters are an increasingly valuable natural resource with major impacts and benefits for population and environment. As the spatial resolution is improved for "ocean color" satellite sensors, such observations become relevant to monitor water quality for lakes. We first demonstrated that the required atmospheric correction cannot be conducted using the standard algorithms developed for ocean. The ocean color sensors have spectral bands that allow characterization of aerosol over dark. land pixels (vegetation in the blue and in the red spectral bands). It is possible to use a representative aerosol model in the atmospheric correction over inland waters after validating the spatial homogeneity of the aerosol model in the take vicinity. The performance of this new algorithm is illustrated on SeaWiFS scenes of the Balaton (Hungary) and the Constance (Germany) lakes. We illustrated the good spatial homogeneity of the aerosols and the meaningfulness of the water leaving radiances derived over these two lakes. We also addressed the specificity of the computation of the Fresnel reflection. The direct to diffuse term of this Fresnel contribution is reduced because of the limited size of the lake. Based on the primary scattering approximation, we propose a simple formulation of this component.