Multispectral Bathymetry via Linear Unmixing of the Benthic Reflectance

Bathymetry is important to shallow coral reef management. Remote sensing is one of the most important techniques for mapping bathymetry. For instance, multispectral remote sensing images have been widely used to map bathymetry of coral reefs. These physically based methods, which are able to retrieve bathymetry, water column inherent optical properties (IOPs), and benthic reflectance simultaneously, generally can achieve good bathymetry results. However, there are strong limitations when facing the scenarios of mixing benthic reflectance for bathymetry with multispectral images. In this study, aiming at handling the mixing phenomenon on the use of multispectral remote sensing images for mapping bathymetry, we propose a new unmixing-based method, namely unmixing-based multispectral optimization process exemplar method (UMOPE). The new method incorporates endmember variability with a linear combination of three fixed endmembers and the relaxation of the sum-to-one constrained. UMOPE was validated with two existing methods with in situ data and a WorldView-2 image in the South China Sea. Results from in situ data show that the proposed method performs the best, with the smallest absolute root mean square error (RMSE)(2.26 m) and the best agreement (R
²
= 0.91) between the measured and estimated water depth. Moreover, results from WV-2 imagery demonstrate the superior performance for the UMOPE at depth range from about 9 to 26 m. Furthermore, since the errors from IOPs can propagate to bathymetry, we further take this issue into account by analyzing the rule of influence of bottom on IOPs. Finally, the result of benthic classification map from UMOPE is shown.