During this webinar, we will employ RUS to learn how Sentinel data can contribute to freshwater monitoring. We will also show you how to access the RUS Service and how to download, process, analyze and visualize the free data acquired by the Copernicus satellites.
Freshwater is a fundamental resource for human civilization, the availability or unavailability of it is directly linked to water security, food security, economic productivity, and conflicts. Moreover, freshwater ecosystems play a major role in driving global biodiversity and ecological stability, however, they are also exceptionally vulnerable to human mismanagement and climate change. With the progress of climatic change and growing world population, the pressure on our freshwater resources is growing and with it the need for careful monitoring and management, to preserve them for current and future generations.
Remote sensing enables us to monitor the number of water-quality indicators that reflect the state of the entire freshwater ecosystems. These indicators observable from space help us to estimate among others the concentrations of Chlorophyll-a, Total suspended matter (TSM), Coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM), as well as the density of cyanobacteria and water turbidity. In this tutorial, we will use the Sentinel-2 Optical sensor to estimate some of these parameters and see their evolution over time.