Towards Operational Water Quality Monitoring with an Analytical Radiative Transfer Model

Water quality monitoring is essential for effective water resources management. Present state of the art satellite sensors provide high spatial and temporal resolution required for operational monitoring of key water quality variables in coastal and inland waters. Nonetheless, most of the retrieval models currently available require regional tuning and are therefore not applicable to other geographic areas and not useful in detecting anomalies. This study introduces an operational model to process Sentinel-2 images from any part of the world and derive water quality indicators based on the analytical solution of the two-stream radiative transfer equations. The potential of the model for monitoring distinct water bodies is demonstrated with two case studies in Brazil and Kenya. Scientific and technical improvements to the model can provide additional robustness and usability.