Retrieving Chlorophyll-A Concentration For Lake Balaton With Landsat Based On GEE

Lake Balaton is the largest lake (~587 km
²
) in middle Europe but very shallow with an average depth of 3 m, whose abundant fauna and flora have irreplaceable ecological values. Its natural beaches and artificial facilities attract millions of tourists all over the world. To facilitate long-term monitoring and management of water quality, Landsat satellites, the longest and most consistent spectral archive of earth observation, are used for Chl-a concentration retrieval. Based on the cloud-based geospatial data platform Google Earth Engine (GEE), this study integrates satellite spectral bands with temporal information to improve Chl-a concentration retrieval with Landsat. Results show that the proposed method has an RMSE 6.41 mg/m
³
. The yearly mean Chl-a shows a good consistency with in-situ measurements and can capture key variability between years and discover the years with high Chl-a concentration. Therefore, this work can benefit exploring long-term spatio-temporal patterns of water quality in Lake Balaton. An online interface has also been developed with GEE for the easy access and visualization of Chl-a variations.