A Look-up-Table Approach to Inverting Remotely Sensed Ocean Color Data

We are developing and evaluating a new technique for the extraction of environmental information such as water-column inherent optical properties and shallow-water bottom depth and classification from remotely-sensed hyperspectral ocean-color spectra. Our technique is based on a “look-up-table (LUT)” approach in which the measured spectrum is compared with a large database of spectra corresponding to known water, bottom, and external environmental conditions. The water and bottom conditions of the water body where the spectrum was measured are then taken to be the same as the conditions corresponding to the database spectrum that most closely matches the measured spectrum. The research issues center on development and evaluation of spectrum-matching algorithms, including quantification of how various types of errors in the measured spectrum influence the retrieved environmental data.