Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Very Shallow Water Bathymetry Retrieval From Hyperspectral Imagery At The Virginia Coast Reserve (Vcr'07) Multi-Sensor Campaign, Charles M. Bachmann, Marcos J. Montes, Robert A. Fusina, Christopher Parrish, Jon Sellars, Alan Weidemann, Wesley Goode, C Reid Nichols, Patrick Woodward, Kevin Mcilhany, Victoria Hill, Richard Zimmerman, Daniel Korwan, Barry Truitt, A. Schwarzschild

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

A number of institutions, including the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), have developed look up tables for remote retrieval of bathymetry and in-water optical properties from hyperspectral imagery (HSI) [6]. For bathymetry retrieval, the lower limit is the very shallow water case (here defined as < 2m), a depth zone which is not well resolved by many existing bathymetric LIDAR sensors, such as SHOALS [4]. The ability to rapidly model these shallow water depths from HSI directly has potential benefits for combined HSI/LIDAR systems such as the Compact Hydrographic Airborne Rapid Total Survey (CHARTS) [10]. In this study, we focused on the validation of a near infra-red feature, corresponding to a local minimum in absorption (and therefore a local peak in reflectance), which can be correlated directly to bathymetry with a high degree of confidence. Compared to other VNIR wavelengths, this particular near-IR feature corresponds to a peak in the correlation with depth in this very shallow water regime, and this is a spectral range where reflectance depends primarily on water depth (water absorption) and bottom type, with suspended constituents playing a secondary role.