Physics Based Assessment of Water Quality Using Landsat TM/ETM Data

Lake water is an essential renewable resource for mankind and the environment and it is important for civil drink water supply. Shitoukoumen reservoir, one of the most important drink water supplies, is taken as examples to assess the water quality by multi-temporal Landsat TM/ETM data. The multiple scattering model within the water is applied to simulate the radiative transfer for retrieval of the pollutants and suspended substance in Shitoukoumen reservoir. By comparison with the field investigation, the water quality is becoming worse and worse and the multiple scattering model performs much better than the usual single scattering model for the assessment to the reservoir water quality.