Effects of depth on reflectance

As noted in 'Effect of colour and depth', increasing depth increases attenuation of sunlight in the water column due to scattering and absorption. These graphs show the effect of increasing water depth on the spectral signatures of four common benthic cover types. As depth increases, less red light and more blue light are recorded by the sensor. The spectral signatures at 1m depth (light blue line) would be seperable, whereas the signatures at 10m depth (dark blue line) are not seperable.

Effect of depth on the spectral signatures of four common benthic cover types

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Reference:

Joyce, K.E. and Phinn, S.R. (2002) Selecting image processing routines for coral reef substrate discrimination. In Proceedings of Ocean Sciences 2002, American Geophysical Union/American Society for Limnology and Oceanography, Honolulu, Hawaii, Feb 10-15.