Mapping temperate water benthic habitat and bathymetry using Sentinel-2 imagery

A SNAP plugin was developed in the frame of ESA Sen2coral project to allow mapping of shallow water bathymetry and benthic habitat type in tropical coral reef environments. The model inversion tool (SWAM) is developed further for temperate and optically complex waterbodies in the frame of ESA Coastal TEP project. We tested the performance of SWAM in shallow areas of Lake Garda, Italy, and Gulf of Finland, Estonia. The bathymetry and benthic habitat maps produced from Sentnel-2 imagery are validated against the in situ data collected in both test sites and airborne hyperspectral imagery flown in Estonia. The preliminary results show that radiometric performance of Sentinel-2 is good also in optically complex coastal waters and that both the empirical and analytical tools in the SNAP plugin perform well in temperate shallow waters with macrophyte and seagrass cover.