Author(s)

M. STEFOULI & ELENI CHAROU

Abstract

Monitoring of the lake ecosystems is of paramount importance for the overall development of a region. Remote sensing is a time- and cost-saving technique that enables the observation of the hydrological and limnological development of the lakes. The objective of this paper is to illustrate how multi-sensor and multi-platform remote sensing data and techniques can be used in the nearly operational monitoring of spatiotemporal changes in lake ecosystems. Existing and time-tested techniques are used to generate spatially distributed baseline data on a timely basis. Landsat data are used to generate a time series maps of Macro and Micro Prespa lakes for a period of 27 years. These maps clearly show the extent of the lakes and the subsequent water level drawn down along with the land cover changes. Landsat images and MERIS satellite images have been used to evaluate water quality parameters, such as water clarity, suspended solids, algae, and turbidity indexes of the lakes. The study developed a spatiotemporal monitoring database system for the Prespa lakes surface waters and its surrounding area. The importance of continuous monitoring is demonstrated by the usefulness of the time-series data. Moreover, these generated data are combined in an easy and innovative way to evaluate the hydro-ecological relationships in the transnational pilot project area.

Keywords

Geomatics-based techniques, Landsat, MERIS satellite images, spatiotemporal monitoring, water quality