Application of shipborne three-channel hyperspectrometer for remote sensing of coastal marine areas and internal seas

For estimation of the ecological state of marine areas under exploration it is often necessary to get operative and detailed information about the main water constituents concentration and their distribution over the area. We developed for this purpose a new passive optical complex for Ecological Monitoring of Marine Areas (EMMA) operating from board a moving vessel. It includes a three-channel semi-automatically operating hyperspectrometer, a gyrostabilized platform and a special program complex for measurement data controlling, saving and further processing according to the original algorithms. The results of complex EMMA application are given for three regions with different water types: the two areas of the Black Sea with oligotrophic and mesotrophic waters and for eutrophic waters in the Rio Grande plume at Brazilian Coast. The obtained distributions of the water constituents concentration are verified by the standard measurements on water samples.