6-Remote Sensing - A Tool for Water Quality Monitoring.

Abstract

Man and nature both affect the aquatic environment. Man utilizes water bodies as sources of water, food, transportation and recreation. Often, the same water becomes sinks for man's wastes as well. Also significant sediment loads by natural processes are brought into these water bodies. These result in the pollution of water which, in turn, seriously effect man's life. Hence, detailed knowledge of the aquatic environment is essential to control the pollution. Conventional in-situ measurements of water qualify parameters are slow, sparse and costly, Remote sensing has signifieant advantages over in-situ techniques in monitoring the water quality parameters because of its synoptic and repetitive nature, Qualitative and quantitative mapping of water quality parametere have been successfully carried out by many workers. In this paper, the principles of interaction of water and light, the sensors and the methodology for measuring the water quality parameters have been described. Significant results available from some case siudies hare also been cited.