Airborne mapping of shallow water bathymetry in the optically complex waters of the Baltic Sea

Accurate determination of the water depth is important for marine spatial planning, producing maritime charts for navigation, seabed morphology studies, and carrying out different activities in the coastal waters. Bathymetric data are lacking foremost in the shallow water regions as those areas are often inaccessible to the hydrographic ships carrying out echo sounding measurements. Remote sensing technology can be used as an alternative for shallow water bathymetry mapping. Varieties of empirical methods have been proposed for bathymetry retrieval, where the relationship between remotely sensed radiance of the water body and the water depth at sampled locations was established empirically. Two most widely used depth derivation methods, the linear band model proposed by Lyzenga (1978, 1985, 2006), and the log-transformed band ratio model proposed by Stumpf et al. (2003), were applied to the different preprocessing level airborne Hyspex hyperspectral images from the optically complex Baltic Sea area and evaluated for accuracy. Results showed that the Lyzenga linear band model outperformed the Stumpf log-transformed band ratio model. The best results were achieved with the atmospherically corrected images. The application of glint correction did not improve, but even reduced the accuracy of bathymetric maps.