On the synergistic use of SAR and optical imagery to monitor cyanobacteria scum in inland waters

Optical remote sensing is a validated tool for detecting, monitoring and developing methodologies aimed at a better understanding of the state of lakes. However, it is highly hindered by clouds. For regions with frequent cloud cover, this means loss of data, which derails the purpose of sensing. This makes difficult to spatially and temporally characterize scum area for a comprehensive ecological analysis. Combining data obtained using different types of sensors can be an option worth investigating, and a good candidate for this purpose is the synthetic aperture radar (SAR), due to its capacity to collect data independent of cloudy cover. We use a synergistic approach involving optical and SAR images together with meteorological param- eters to monitor algal cyanobacteria blooms in lakes. The satellite images are provided by the Senti- nel 1 and 2 satellites. Meteorological parameters come from in situ stations or from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) database. Poster presented at 'Dragon 4 Mid-term Results Symposium, Xi’an, P.R. China, 19-22 June 2018