Detection of floating aquatic plants using high spatial resolution imagery in the Río de la Plata estuary
Poster. HIGHROC Science Conference. Brussels, Belgium, 7 – 9 November 2017.
At the beginning of 2016 a huge amount of aquatic plants invaded the highly turbid waters of Rio de la Plata (Argentina) causing significant disruption of human activities via clogging drinking water intakes in the estuary, blocking ports and marinas and introducing dangerous animals from faraway wetlands into the city. Even though drifting aquatic plant detachments drift downstream the Paraná river every year in small amounts, large temporary invasions have been observed every 10 years. The large temporary invasion of aquatic plants that took place from January to April 2016 has been caused by the heavy rains, driven by a strong El Niño, that increased river levels in the La Plata basin. The event has been detected using different mid to high resolution remote systems. In this work we show the capability of high-resolution multi-spectral imagery like Sentinel-2, Landsat-8, and MODIS-250m, for mapping and quantifying the large aquatic hyacinth invasion in the RdP that started in January 2016. Both the large amount of particles as well as the increasing spatial resolution poses challenges for its correct detection. An index that uses bands in the red (to take into account chlorophyll-a absorption), the near-infrared, and short-wave infrared bands is proposed and validated using field measurements.
Dogliotti, A. I., Gossn, J.I., Vanhellemont, Q. and Ruddick, K.