Fusion of Landsat-8/OLI and GOCI Data for Hourly Mapping of Suspended Particulate Matter at High Spatial Resolution: A Case Study in the Yangtze (Changjiang) Estuary

Suspended particulate matter (SPM) concentrations ([SPM]) in the Yangtze estuary, which has third-order bifurcations and four outlets, exhibit large spatial and temporal variations. Studying the characteristics of these variations in [SPM] is important for understanding sediment transport and pollutant diffusion in the estuary as well as for the construction of port and estuarine engineering structures. The 1-h revisit frequency of the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) sensor and the 30-m spatial resolution of the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (L8/OLI) provide a new opportunity to study the large spatial and temporal variations in the [SPM] in the Yangtze estuary. In this study, [SPM] images with a temporal resolution of 1 h and a spatial resolution of 30 m are generated through the product-level fusion of [SPM] data derived from L8/OLI and GOCI images using the Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (STARFM). The results show that the details and accuracy of the spatial and temporal variations are maintained well in the [SPM] images that are predicted based on the fused images. Compared to the [SPM] observations at fixed field stations, the mean relative error (MRE) of the predicted SPM is 17.7%, which is lower than that of the GOCI-derived [SPM] (27.5%). In addition, thanks to the derived high-resolution [SPM] with high spatiotemporal dynamic changes, both natural phenomena (dynamic variation of the maximum turbid zone) and human engineering changes leading to the dynamic variability of SPM in the channel are observed.