USE OF REMOTE SENSING TECHNIQUES FOR THE ESTIMATION OF CHLOROPHYLL-A IN THE ABREUS RESERVOIR

Abstract

The deterioration of the quality of continental waters has been a growing problem in recent years. Numerous natural and human factors have contributed to the increase in the values of indicators such as chlorophyll-a (Chl-a), due to this, great is the effort involved in this field to find the best techniques and instruments to monitor the hydric resources. The objective of this work is to use Remote Sensing techniques to estimate the concentration of chlorophyll-a in the Abreus reservoir, Cienfuegos province. The research used field samples collected between 2016 and 2021 by the Center for Environmental Studies of Cienfuegos (CESC) and images from the Landsat 8 satellite, freely acquired from the Earth Explorer website; with these data and the use of regression techniques, 3 simple regression models were selected and validated to estimate the concentration of chlorophyll-a in the reservoir itself. The algorithm with the best results contains the B4/B5 ratio and obtained an R² of 98.93% and an RMSE of 2.12 µg/L, this model was applied to the satellite image of 06.12.2019 and allowed to obtain a thematic map that reflects the spatial distribution of chlorophyll-a in the body of water, for that date.