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Developing the Use of Sentinel Satellites Constellation for the Monitoring of Inland Water Quality

Point of contact
Laura Sedaine
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
3 rue Michel Ange
75016 Paris
Phone: +33-1-44964325


The GET laboratory, a CNRS laboratory, has developed the use of remote sensing images for river and lake water quality monitoring across the largest river catchment in the world. The GET laboratory is leading a working group on this topic at the French THEIA land data services center that is a French national inter-agency organization designed to foster the use of images issued from the space observation of land surfaces, in particular from COPERNICUS program. GET laboratory, with his partners in France, are currently developing an automatic processing chain for deriving water quality parameters from Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 images for the THEIA data center. The water quality parameters will include turbidity, chlorophyll-a, water transparency and carbon organic content. The data are currently made available for everyone on the THEIA data center, with the objective of following operationally more than 150 river and lakes in France and across the world in the next two years. Special attention will be paid to emerging countries, where conventional monitoring networks are sparse or inexistent.

The objective of this proposal is to disseminate the use of Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 images for inland water quality monitoring towards water resource specialists including (1) postgraduate students, (2) researchers and (3) professionals from stakeholders (water agencies, etc…) through capacity building activities. In particular, we aim at:

  • Increasing the professional/academic awareness on the recent availability of remote sensing based products for water quality monitoring in lakes and rivers originating from Copernicus data (Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 satellites) through the French THEIA data center
  • Providing the technical information about the satellite images and the data processing routines (atmospheric correction, algorithms, etc…)
  • Providing the required knowledge to access and use the remote sensing-based water quality data

Two main communities will be targeted: 1) “critical zone” scientists such as from the French OZCAR and European LTER (Long-Term Ecosystem Research) Research Infrastructures aiming at an integrated understanding of the Earth’s surface processes; 2) professionals from biodiversity and water agencies from Europe and emerging countries.

Outputs and Results

  • Two workshops organized by CNRS at GET laboratory in Toulouse
  • Dissemination of the Copernicus Program and of the THEIA land data center
  • Identification of gaps and potential improvements in order to provide feedback and improvements to the Sentinel-based products developed by the CNRS/GET laboratory and its partners