This processor has been developed as a joint effort between GKSS Research Centre,Institute for Coastal Research,
and Brockmann Consult, under contract of the European Space Agency ESA. Co-investigators in form of
sub-contractors are the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) and the Institute of
Ocean Sciences (IOS), BC, Canada.
The task of the developed plugin processor is to produce Level 2 data from MERIS Level 1b data for
regional coastal waters. This includes an algorithm for atmospheric correction and an algorithm to
derive properties of the water such as the inherent optical properties (IOP's) absorption and
scattering and the concentrations of total suspended matter (TSM) and chlorophyll from the water
leaving radiance reflectance spectra (i.e. after atmospheric correction).
The processor has been validated during the validation of the the lakes processors. For this validation in situ data from lakes in Finland, Spain and Germany were used. Tests have also been performed for two lakes in Africa. The results of the validation are presented in the Validation Report. Also see the related Validation Protocol. The results show that in some cases (e.g. in Finland, where lakes typically are surrounded by forest) correction for adjacency effects changes the results significantly. Thus, we recommend testing the use of, for example, a processor called ICOL as a preprocessing step. ICOL can be downloaded with the Module Manager of BEAM. The results of the validation can be downloaded from the Lakes Wiki at http://www.brockmann-consult.de/beam-wiki/display/LAKES/Home
If you publish results derived with the processors please use this reference:
Doerffer R. and H. Schiller (2008): MERIS Regional Coastal and Lake Case 2 Water Project - Atmospheric Correction ATBD,
GKSS Research Center 21502 Geesthacht Version 1.0 18. May 2008