Use of Sentinel - 2 images and aquatic vegetation relevee for classification of lakes’ ecological state

Abstract

At present, the characterization and monitoring of water bodies’ ecological state is achieved with important financial resources supported by the EU member countries. Since human and financial resources are limited, the development of new mapping tools such as remote sensing ones may be a practical alternative for water bodies’ assessment and monitoring, especially within Danube Delta, which has over 300 lakes, many of whom are difficult to access. The paper present the first results on developing a methodology to monitor Danube Delta lakes’ trophic state by means of satellite image processing and field data on water depth, transparency and vegetation cover of floating and submerge aquatic vegetation (e. g. Nymphaea sp., Nuphar luteum, Trapa natans, Stratiodes aloides, Ceratophyllum demersum, Potamogeton sp., Chara sp.) It starts with the completion of the field database necessary to elaborate the methodology and then we have test a series of specific thematic algorithms for discrimination of aquatic vegetation types based on Sentinel 2 images. The next step will be integration of hydro morphological, chemical and biological data to run supervised classification of the satellite images in order to discriminate trophic status of different lakes.

Keywords

• Remote sensing
• aquatic vegetation relevee
• lakes