Improving Chlorophyll-A Estimation From Sentinel-2 (MSI) in the Barents Sea Using Machine Learning

This article addresses methodologies for remote sensing of ocean Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a), with emphasis on the Barents Sea. We aim at improving the monitoring capacity by integrating in situ Chl-a observations and optical remote sensing to locally train machine learning (ML) models. For this purpose,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
Main Authors: Muhammad Asim, Camilla Brekke, Arif Mahmood, Torbjorn Eltoft, Marit Reigstad
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2021
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2021.3074975
https://doaj.org/article/c573435d6cc447be9e26062a67227096
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Summary:This article addresses methodologies for remote sensing of ocean Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a), with emphasis on the Barents Sea. We aim at improving the monitoring capacity by integrating in situ Chl-a observations and optical remote sensing to locally train machine learning (ML) models. For this purpose, in situ measurements of Chl-a ranging from 0.014–10.81 mg/m $^{3}$ , collected for the years 2016–2018, were used to train and validate models. To accurately estimate Chl-a, we propose to use additional information on pigment content within the productive column by matching the depth-integrated Chl-a concentrations with the satellite data. Using the optical images captured by the multispectral imager instrument on Sentinel-2 and the in situ measurements, a new spatial window-based match-up dataset creation method is proposed to increase the number of match-ups and hence improve the training of the ML models. The match-ups are then filtered to eliminate erroneous samples based on the spectral distribution of the remotely sensed reflectance. In addition, we design and implement a neural network model dubbed as the ocean color net (OCN), that has performed better than existing ML-based techniques, including the Gaussian process Regression (GPR), regionally tuned empirical techniques, including the ocean color (OC3) algorithm and the spectral band ratios, as well as the globally trained Case-2 regional/coast colour (C2RCC) processing chain model C2RCC-networks. The proposed OCN model achieved reduced mean absolute error compared to the GPR by 5.2%, C2RCC by 51.7%, OC3 by 22.6%, and spectral band ratios by 29%. Moreover, the proposed spatial window and depth-integrated match-up creation techniques improved the performance of the proposed OCN by 57%, GPR by 41.9%, OC3 by 5.3%, and spectral band ratio method by 24% in terms of RMSE compared to the conventional match-up selection approach.