Abstract
Conventional water quality measurements are nearly impossible during and immediately after extreme storms due to dangerous conditions. In this study, remotely sensed reflectance is used to develop a regression equation that quantifies total suspended solids (TSS) in near real-time after Hurricane Harvey. The application focused specifically on sediment loading and deposition and its potential impacts on the Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Bay riverine-estuarine system. The European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite captured images at critical points in the storm’s progression, necessitating the development of a new algorithm for this relatively new satellite mission. Several linear regressions were analyzed with the goal of developing a simple one- or two-band equation, and the final model uses the red and near infrared bands (R2 = 0.74). Results show that record flows during Harvey delivered unprecedented suspended sediment loads to the Gulf of Mexico at concentrations above 125 mg/L with a mean concentration of 43 mg/L across the bay. The study findings demonstrated that it took up to 11 days after the storm for sediment transport to abate.
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Acknowledgments
Maria Modelska is acknowledged for providing valuable comments on the manuscript.
Funding
The Houston Endowment, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the US-EPA, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Rapid Award #1759440, and the Hurricane Resilience Research Institute (HuRRI) provided funding for the study.
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Sobel, R.S., Kiaghadi, A. & Rifai, H.S. Modeling water quality impacts from hurricanes and extreme weather events in urban coastal systems using Sentinel-2 spectral data. Environ Monit Assess 192, 307 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08291-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08291-5