Water quality monitoring using remote sensing technique

There has been a rapid growth of shrimp farm around Kung Krabaen Bay in the past decade. This has caused enormous rise in generation of domestic and industrial wastes. Most of these wastes are disposed in the Kung Krabaen Bay. There is a serious need to retain this glory by better water quality management of this river. Conventional methods of monitoring of water quality have limitations in collecting information about water quality parameters for a large region in detailed manner due to high cost and time. Satellite based technologies have offered an alternate approach for many environmental monitoring needs. In this study, the high-resolution satellite data (LANDSAT TM) was utilized to develop mathematical models for monitoring of chlorophyll-a. Comparison between empirical relationship of spectral reflectance with chl-a and band ratio between the near infrared (NIR) and red was suggested to detect chlorophyll in water. This concept has been successfully employed for marine zones and big lakes but not for narrow rivers due to constraints of spatial resolution of satellite data. This information will be very useful in locating point and non-point sources of pollution and will help in designing and implementing controlling structures.