Satellite-based lake monitoring

The federal state of Baden-Württemberg in the South West of Germany is rich in sweetwater. It counts 28 lakes larger than 50 ha, 260 lakes with more than 10 ha and 1300 smaller lakes (> 1 ha).

For monitoring these inland waters – many of which are bathing waters, we have been cooperating with the environmental authority LUBW – Landesanstalt für Umwelt Baden-Württemberg since 2021. Its project SAMOSEE-BW has now made it to the top of the eGovernment competition – a contest of all German speaking countries: The satellite-based lake monitoring case was selected winner of the category “Sustainability by Digitalisation”.

For their lake monitoring, the environmental agency is successfully complementing in situ data with satellite-based information from Landsat and Sentinel-2 sensors. In brief, the German federal agency LUBW …

📍 is integrating satellite-based remote sensing into routine monitoring
📍 of Lake Constance, 50 natural small lakes and 20 quarry ponds
📍 to keep an eye on key parameters, such as Chlorophyll a, turbidity, harmful algae blooms (HAB), Secchi Disk Depth (SDD), temperature,
📍 thus helping fulfil the regional and EU monitoring requirements for water protection
📍 and visualizing these data for easy public access.

💡 Authorities can benefit from satellite-based information by significant information gain and decision support, in particular for smaller water bodies, where there is no or little data available.

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Read the product description and watch the short video here.
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