Important information about this processor:

The processor was developed during an ESA project "Development of MERIS Lake Water Algorithms" (Jan. 2007 - June 2008, ESRIN Contract No. 20436/06/I-LG). The purpose of the processor is to derive information about lake water quality from MERIS data. The current release includes two versions:

  1. Boreal lakes processor (for lakes typical in boreal forest region): In these lakes the absorption by gelbstoff can be high. Most of the lakes are oligotrophic, but meso- and eutrophic lakes exist as well.
  2. Eutrophic lakes processor: In these lakes the optical properties are dominated by phytoplankton. Chlorophyll a concentrations can be high.
The related Case 2 Regional processor is also applicable for lakes. The algorithms that relate the radiances observed by MERIS to first atmospherically corrected reflectances and then to water quality constituents were developed by Roland Doerffer (GKSS). The algorithms are described in: You can download these documents from the Lakes Wiki at http://www.brockmann-consult.de/beam-wiki/display/LAKES/Home Also the help files in the processors contain useful information.

The processors have been validated with in situ data from lakes in Finland, Spain and Germany. 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

If you want to receive news and updates about the processor please send an email to the coordinator of the MERIS LAKES project: Sampsa Koponen (sampsa.koponen@tkk.fi). Any comments and questions are also welcome.

The project team is interested in developing the processor further. For this purpose, information about your results is very valuable. Please, let the coordinator know about any results you publish.

The web pages of the project are here http://www.space.tkk.fi/research/projects/water_quality_monitoring/MERIS_Lakes.html