Anthropogenic land use activities are significantly contributing to the ecological degradation of the Earth system. Therefore, having actual and reliable land cover information is fundamental to study the impact of such an ecological degradation on our future welfare. High spatial resolution sensors, such as Landsat TM, are typically used to derive land cover information from local to regional ...

The MERIS Terrestrial Chlorophyll Index (MTCI), a standard level 2 ESA product, provides information on the chlorophyll content of vegetation (amount of chlorophyll per unit area of ground). This is a combination of information on leaf area index (LAI, area of leaves per unit area of ground) and the chlorophyll concentration of those leaves. The MTCI correlates strongly with chlorophyll content...

The total suspended sediment (TSS) concentrations obtained by the satellite remote sensing instrument MERIS were validated using in situ data acquired during a dry and a wet season in the vicinity of the Herbert River, central Great Barrier Reef region, Australia. The available MERIS imagery for the region covering 16 months in 2003-2004 was then compiled, and derived TSS distributions statisti...

A Bayesian model is developed to match aerospace ocean color observation to field measurements and derive the spatial variability of match-up sites. The performance of the model is tested against populations of synthesized spectra and full and reduced resolutions of MERIS data. The model derived the scale difference between synthesized satellite pixel and point measurements with R(2) > 0.88 and...

The GLOBCOVER project delivers a global land cover map at 300 m spatial resolution using MERIS FRS data acquired during the 19 months period from December 2004 until June 2006. As multiple single orbits has to be combined in one single dataset. Therefore, we need to assess the relative and absolute geolocation of MERIS projected products. We describe hereafter the main steps of the ortho-rectif...

The signal recorded by the sensor contains information relative both to the atmosphere and the surface. Atmospheric correction is necessary to extract the surface reflectance required within biophysical algorithms used to estimate canopy characteristics. Aerosol characteristics are the most difficult to evaluate because they vary rapidly with time and space. The objective is to develop an auton...

Estimates of crop canopy chlorophyll content (CCC) can be used to monitor vegetation productivity, manage resources, and control disease pests. However, making these estimates using conventional ground-based methods is time-consuming resource-intensive when deployed over large areas. Although indices (VIs), derived from satellite sensor data, have been estimate CCC, they suffer problems related...

The sun glint is a major issue for the observation of ocean color from space. For sensors without a tilting capacity, the observations at sub-tropical latitudes are contaminated by the bright pattern of the specular reflexion of the sun by the wavy sea surface. Common atmospheric correction algorithms are not designed to work in these observation conditions, reducing the spatial coverage at suc...

The European Space Agency has acquired 10 years of data on the temporal and spatial distribution of phytoplankton biomass from the MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) sensor for ocean color. The phytoplankton biomass was estimated with the MERIS product Algal Pigment Index 1 (API 1). Seasonal-Trend decomposition of time series based on Loess (STL) identified the temporal variability ...