Remote sensing of bottom reflectance and water attenuation parameters in shallow water using aircraft and Landsat data

The reflectance of shallow water areas to solar illumination is a function of the water depth, the water optical properties and the bottom reflectance. Assuming the water optical properties to be uniform over a given scene area, the signals recorded by a multispectral scanner system may be combined to obtain information on the water attenuation and bottom reflectance parameters without knowledge of the water depth. These techniques are described and evaluated for a test site near North Cat Cay in the Bahamas.