The European Space Agency, a group funded by 15 European countries to promote space exploration and research, has commissioned a $300,000 project using satellite imagery to assess the responses of bays in Florida and Wales to water quality improvement projects. London-based AMEC will perform the analysis on multi-spectral-band images gathered by ESA’s Earth observation satellites over the last several years. One target is Cardiff Bay, Wales, which has an aeration system installed by AMEC five years ago to battle algae blooms. The other is Florida Bay, also plagued by algae blooms, whose reduction is one of many targets of restoration efforts now under way in the Everglades.

“It’s a demonstration of whiz-bang technology using high-end data collection from space to determine how we are doing, impacting water quality,” says Scott Stoodley, a senior environmental scientist at AMEC’s office in Westford, Mass. He says ESA and AMEC are interested in projects like this that can demonstrate the usefulness of space-based sensing for environmental monitoring.

Using satellite data allows researchers to collect the entire data set from a body of water in an instant instead of physically taking samples at different places and times, Stoodley says. “It gives you a snapshot of your entire water body at a single point in time,” he explains.

AMEC will use new software that analyzes the images for suspended chlorophyll, minerals and colored dissolved organic carbon. It also, for the first time, uses new algorithms to automatically calculate water volume and depth, even in turbid water, without the need for calibration. “It’s seeing water as you have never seen it before,” says Stoodley. Analysis of data is expected to start in June.