The MERIS Maximum Chlorophyll Index; its merits and limitations for inland water algal bloom monitoring

abstract Article history:Received 23 November 2011Accepted 17 January 2013Available online 22 May 2013Communicated by George LeshkevichKeywords:Remote sensingMERISAquatic colourGreat lakesWater qualityAlgal blooms Satellite remote sensing methods adopting wavelengths in the red and near infra-red have been shown to besuperior to the standard blue to green ratio based approaches in the detection of algal blooms under turbid,eutrophic conditions. Here, the MERIS Maximum Chlorophyll Index (MCI) has been explored as a tool formonitoring algal blooms in North America's inland waters where waters range from optically complex, tur-bid, eutrophic conditions, to low chlorophyll and oligotrophic conditions. Assessment of the MERIS MCI prod-uct is made for intense blooms of cyanobacteria in Lake of the Woods, algal blooms in turbid waters of LakeErie, and low chlorophyll conditions in Lake Ontario. The MCI product is shown to be a versatile tool in mon-itoring intense surficial algal blooms with chlorophyll concentrations in the 10–300 mg m