Monitoring Freshwater Areas in Denmark - Development of an Administration Tool Utilizing EO Data.
Hansen, Lars Boye1; Huber, Silvia1; Jørgensen, Torben Bramming2; Closter, Rikke Margrethe3; Søndergaard, Martin4; Andersson, Henrik3; Kaas, Hanne3
1GRAS, DENMARK; 2Vand- og Miljørådgivning v. Torben Bramming Jørgensen, DENMARK; 3DHI, DENMARK; 4Department of Freshwater Ecology, Danish Centre for Environment and Energy (DCE), DENMARK

Existing monitoring programs are currently under increasing pressure due to the requirements associated with the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) by 2015. Detailed plans must be implemented which requires excessive documentation on both a temporal and spatial scale. In Denmark 100 out of the approximately 850 Danish lakes larger than 5 hectares are monitored each year in accordance to the WFD;the majority only a few times through the summer season and only a few routinely over the full season.

In conjunction with the need of a high level of information the monitoring program in Denmark is under financial pressure. Incorporation of new technology should therefore aim at both making the current activities more efficient plus provide cost-effective new information.

Chlorophyll is yet the only intercalibrated WFD quality parameter by which the ecological conditions of lakes in the EU are evaluated. Satellite based information has great potential to provide valuable and relevant supplementary information to the activities under the traditional monitoring programs, for instance by adding a periodic spatial component. Based on a two-year funding from the EcoInnovation sector of the Danish Ministry of Environment a cooperation between GRAS, DHI and the Department of Freshwater Ecology, Danish Centre for Environment and Energy (DCE) was initiated in 2010 with the aim to explore the possibilities of incorporating satellite data into the existing monitoring program. Following the successful demonstration of the possibilities another two-year activity has just been initiated with the aim to develop a first version of an administration tool that in its final form will allow efficient incorporation of both satellite and in-situ data. The aim is to provide a number of predefined outputs such as a classification scheme ranking lakes according to their current ecological status, trend detection over time, visualization of results (graphical/tabular) etc..

In this work we present the results of the evaluation of the possibilities of mapping chl-a in lakes in Denmark - based on very high resolution data and MERIS FR data - and the overall concept of the administration tool that will be developed during the next two years aiming at integrating EO based information with the current monitoring program. The development of the tool will be based on the newly launched LDCM data leading to a direct incorporation of Sentinel-2 data when they become available by 2014. MERIS experiences will be incorporated to prepare for the availability of Sentinel-3 data.