Google Earth Engine for Monitoring Marine Mucilage: Izmit Bay in Spring 2021

Global warming together with environmental pollution threatens marine habitats and causes an increasing number of disasters. Periodic monitoring coastal water quality is critical importance for the effective management resources sustainability ecosystems. The use remote sensing technologies provides significant benefits detecting, monitoring, analyzing rapidly occurring displaced natural phenomena, including mucilage events. In this study, five indices estimated from cloud-free partly cloudy Sentinel-2 images acquired May to July 2021 were employed effectively map aggregates on sea surface in Izmit Bay using cloud-based Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. Results showed that started coverage about 6 km² 14 May, reached highest level 24 diminished at end July. Among applied indices, Adjusted Floating Algae Index (AFAI) was superior producing maps even image, followed by Normalized Difference Turbidity (NDTI) Mucilage (MI). To be more specific, green channel found inferior extracting information satellite images.