Sea bed maping in the lagoon of New Caledonia

Features on the sea bed can be mapped from remote sensing multi/superspectral imagery provided that their effects on the measured reflectance spectrum can be rendered independent of those produced by the atmosphere and water column. The non-linear effect of water column light attenuation can then be corrected to obtain the absolute reflectance of the seabed. Light attenuation by the water column can be determined by simultaneously measuring the radiance of spectral reference on the seabed. Bathymetry can be determined by measuring the relative reflectance of standard features on the seabed in green and red light spectral bands. This article describes the methodology and results are presented in the lagoon of New Caledonia with MeRIS images.