Determination of Turbidity in Kourris Dam in Cyprus Utilizing Landsat TM Remotely Sensed Data

Determination of turbidity is a common component of water-quality assessments. In regions where there are a lot of inland waters such as dams, sampling even a small proportion of those dams for monitoring and assessing water quality is cost prohibitive. Satellite remote sensing has the potential to be a powerful tool for assessing water quality over large spatial scales. The overall objective of this study was to examine whether Landsat-5 TM (Thematic Mapper) and Landsat-7 ETM+ (Enhanced Thematic Mapper) could be used to measure turbidity across theKourris Dam, which is the biggest dam in Cyprus. This paper presents the results obtained by applying the linear regression analysis in order to examine the relationship between the turbidity measurements measured in-situ during the satellite overpass against at-satellite atmospheric corrected reflectance values. It has been found that the reflectance, after atmospheric correction, at LandsatTMBands 1 and 3 is strongly related with turbidity levels after linear regression analysis. The most significant correlation was occurred when reflectance in TM band 3 and logarithmic reflectance in TM band 3 were correlated with turbidity measurements. Indeed, the correlation coefficient (R) when atmospheric corrected reflectance (ρ) in the LandsatTMband 3 were correlated against turbidity, before atmospheric correction was R=0.38 and after atmospheric correction was R=1; and when atmospheric corrected logarithmic reflectance (Log ρ) in the Landsat TM band 3 were correlated against turbidity, before atmospheric correction was R=0.46 and after atmospheric correction was R=1. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006