A Sub-Bottom Type Adaption-Based Empirical Approach for Coastal Bathymetry Mapping Using Multispectral Satellite Imagery

Accurate bathymetric data in shallow water is of increasing importance for navigation safety, coastal management, and marine transportation. Satellite-derived bathymetry (SDB) is widely accepted as an effective alternative to conventional acoustic measurements in coastal areas, providing high spatial and temporal resolution combined with extensive repetitive coverage. Many previous empirical SDB approaches are unsuitable for precision bathymetry mapping in various scenarios, due to the assumption of homogeneous bottom over the whole region, as well as the neglect of various interfering factors (e.g., turbidity) causing radiation attenuation. Therefore, this study proposes a bottom-type adaption-based SDB approach (BA-SDB). Under the consideration of multiple factors including suspended particulates and phytoplankton, it uses a particle swarm optimization improved LightGBM algorithm (PSO-LightGBM) to derive depth of each pre-segmented bottom type. Based on multispectral images of high spatial resolution and in situ observations of airborne laser bathymetry and multi-beam echo sounder, the proposed approach is applied in shallow water around Yuanzhi Island, and achieves the highest accuracy with an RMSE value of 0.85 m compared to log-ratio, multi-band, and classical machine learning methods. The results of this study show that the introduction of water-environment parameters improves the performance of the machine learning model for bathymetric mapping.

Automated summary

Accurate bathymetric data in shallow water is crucial for navigation safety, coastal management, and marine transportation. This study proposes a bottom-type adaption-based satellite-derived bathymetry approach (BA-SDB) that considers multiple interfering factors and uses a particle swarm optimization improved LightGBM algorithm for precise depth measurement. Applied in the shallow water around Yuanzhi Island, the BA-SDB approach achieves the highest accuracy with an RMSE value of 0.85 m compared to other methods.