Optical water characterization and atmospheric correction assessment of estuarine and coastal waters around the AERONET-OC Bahia Blanca

The site AERONET-OC Bahía Blanca (BB-AERONET-OC) is located at the mouth of the Bahía Blanca Estuary, Argentina (Southwestern Atlantic Ocean), a coastal system defined by its high suspended loads and relatively low colored dissolved organic matter. The typically high turbidity of these waters makes the BB-AERONET-OC distinctive within the AERONET-OC network stations, providing exceptional opportunities not only for the validation of atmospheric correction algorithms but also for the development of regional algorithms for coastal complex waters. A SeaWiFS Photometer Revision for Incident Surface Measurements (SeaPRISM) instrument was deployed in January 2020 in the upper rail of a Mareograph Tower, a 15 m tall structure, located 10 miles away from the coast in optically deep waters. In this work we used the remote sensing reflectance (Rrs) derived from the BB-AERONET-OC measurements along with in situ hyperspectral radiometric data to classify optical water types (OWTs). We assigned each Rrs(λ) spectra to one of the five OWTs defined by Tran et al., and OWTs were further characterized with the concentrations of optically significant components (chlorophyll-a and suspended particulate matter) and inherent optical properties (absorptions of phytoplankton, non-algal particles, and dissolved organic matter), retrieved from water samples obtained simultaneously with radiometric spectra. Based on a match-up exercise with in situ data, different schemes of atmospheric correction methods were applied to Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) images. The operational product OLCI Level 2 European Space Agency (ESA) standard (hereafter referred to as “Standard Neural Network (NN)”) proves to be the most suitable atmospheric correction algorithm, which was then used to describe spatial patterns and temporal variability of the different OWTs in the region. The BB-AERONET-OC site is located in a sharp transition between estuarine and coastal waters that present contrasting optical conditions: OWT 4 dominates over time (73.72% of the observations), followed by OWT 3 (24.74%) and OWT 5 (1.53%). OWTs 4 and 5 are associated with turbid waters of the Bahía Blanca Estuary, especially OWT 5, which typifies the very turbid waters from the inner estuary, with the particulate load dominated by mineral sediments and detritus. OWT 3, in turn, depicts the eutrophic coastal waters of the inner shelf. The variability of OWTs and the relative contribution of organic and inorganic compounds to the suspended material would be mostly related with the prevalence of northwest winds in the area, which would drive the export of estuarine sediments to the shelf.