Point or pointless – quality of ground data

A method for measuring continuously the inherent optical properties of water together with the salinity and the temperature values was developed and tested at the Division of Geophysics, University of Helsinki. The flow‐through system operates from a moving boat and has been used to collect parameters for optical modelling, coastal zone and inland water studies and to track the path of the fresh water spreading into sea areas. The system was also used in Lake Vanern, Sweden, to calculate the radiance reflectance, R r, and total back‐scattering efficiency, b b eff, along a transect. An example from the Gulf of Finland is presented, which shows how the spectral behaviour of light changes when moving away from a fresh water source. Data collected from the River Kymijoki estuary showed that the details in a rapidly changing environment were strongly smoothed in a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data image. The correlation for continuously measured scattering values and MODIS channel 1 da...