Monitoring of environmental impact of marine aquaculture farms using satellite-derived water quality parameters

Growing aquaculture industry raises concerns about the impact of the production on environmental quality of the coastal waters and its sustainability. On the other hand monitoring of various water quality parameters is also needed for efficient management of the aquaculture.

Satellite remote sensing can provide easy accessible and scientific-based contribution to such monitoring and assessment. Recent developments in remote sensing technology, especially advances in spatial resolution of satellite imagery, applicable to the coastal environment, allows for much more effective use of this type of information in monitoring the aquaculture sites and adjacent waters.

Evaluation of modern satellite imagery in such application will be presented and discussed. As an example of using satellite data and methods, the impact of aquaculture sites in various European locations, on key indicators of the water quality, such as chla a concentration and proxies like water clarity, will be also demonstrated