Sensitivity Analysis

An important step to determine whether certain coastal environment parameters can be estimated using optical remote sensing measurements is to establish their identifiability from the measured water leaving remote sensing reflectance. This work addresses the Sensitivity Analysis of water leaving remote sensing reflectance to water constituents, based on the prior uncertainties of all input parameters to the model used, Hydrolight, a radiative transfer code for ocean waters. The Morris screening method is used to determine which parameters have a substantial influence on the Remote Sensing Reflectance. Once the most influential parameters are identified, a more precise Sensitivity Analysis can be made using the Sobol method (variance analysis) focusing on the most important parameters. As an important application, the sensitivity analysis was applied to coral reef waters, leading to the formulation of band relationships for the estimation of bathymetry and seabed reflectance.