Sensors (Apr 2020)

A Method for Chlorophyll-a and Suspended Solids Prediction through Remote Sensing and Machine Learning

  • Lucas Silveira Kupssinskü,
  • Tainá Thomassim Guimarães,
  • Eniuce Menezes de Souza,
  • Daniel C. Zanotta,
  • Mauricio Roberto Veronez,
  • Luiz Gonzaga,
  • Frederico Fábio Mauad

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/s20072125
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 20, no. 7
p. 2125

Abstract

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Total Suspended Solids (TSS) and chlorophyll-a concentration are two critical parameters to monitor water quality. Since directly collecting samples for laboratory analysis can be expensive, this paper presents a methodology to estimate this information through remote sensing and Machine Learning (ML) techniques. TSS and chlorophyll-a are optically active components, therefore enabling measurement by remote sensing. Two study cases in distinct water bodies are performed, and those cases use different spatial resolution data from Sentinel-2 spectral images and unmanned aerial vehicles together with laboratory analysis data. In consonance with the methodology, supervised ML algorithms are trained to predict the concentration of TSS and chlorophyll-a. The predictions are evaluated separately in both study areas, where both TSS and chlorophyll-a models achieved R-squared values above 0.8.

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