Experimental research on quantitative inversion models of suspended sediment concentration using remote sensing technology

Research on quantitative models of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) using remote sensing technology is very important to understand the scouring and siltation variation in harbors and water channels. Based on laboratory study of the relationship between different suspended sediment concentrations and reflectance spectra measured synchronously, quantitative inversion models of SSC based on single factor, band ratio and sediment parameter were developed, which provides an effective method to retrieve the SSC from satellite images. Results show that the b1 (430–500nm) and b3 (670–735nm) are the optimal wavelengths for the estimation of lower SSC and the b4 (780–835nm) is the optimal wavelength to estimate the higher SSC. Furthermore the band ratio B2/B3 can be used to simulate the variation of lower SSC better and the B4/B1 to estimate the higher SSC accurately. Also the inversion models developed by sediment parameters of higher and lower SSCs can get a relatively higher accuracy than the single factor and band ratio models.