Open Knowledge Exchange Fellowship: Exploitation of satellite remote sensing for regulation and monitoring of inland and transitional water quality

Inland and transitional waters, including lakes and reservoirs, are amongst the most exploited natural resources on our planet. They constitute only a small fraction of our planet's water distribution and yet support a vital range of ecosystems and services essential for regulating carbon cycling and climate, and sustaining human well-being. Societies rely on inland water resources for multiple competing ecosystem services including drinking water, sanitation management, agriculture, aquaculture and fisheries, transport, energy, industry, recreation and tourism. A growing number of users and uses have intensified pressures applied to inland waters and over exploitation often results in degradation of water quality. Our absolute dependency on these water services is such that strict monitoring is essential to manage the impacts on water quality status and function to protect long-term sustainability in addition to ecosystem and human health. Consequently, environment agencies and water utility companies spend a significant proportion of their annual operational budgets monitoring and treating our inland waters to ensure the water is safe for human consumption. This fellowship presents a new proactive method for regulatory monitoring, which is both timely and cost effective and will drive a step change in the way we manage freshwater resources in the UK. The fellowship will deliver management solutions optimised for end-users which will facilitate the protection of public and water industry customers.

EU regulations (EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), and Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (UWWTD)) dictate water monitoring strategies in the UK and it is the responsibility of environment agencies (e.g. Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Environment Agency (EA)) and water utility companies (e.g. Scottish Water, Anglian Water) to assess water quality. Tests are typically performed through conventional in-situ sampling with visits to hundreds of water bodies organised every year. This traditional method of monitoring is labour and cost intensive and the results are often unrepresentative of the complete water environment both spatially and temporally. Furthermore, as the need for additional spatial coverage is increasing through operational requirement, the actual frequency of site sampling is decreasing. In some cases, ground measurements are recorded only a small number of times in a WFD cycle. This challenge is exacerbated in remote regions of the UK and Ireland where many water bodies are inaccessible for ground sampling.

Satellite remote sensing could play an essential role in bridging this data gap by providing a complementary source of data for water quality monitoring in transitional and inland waters. Satellite remote sensing is capable of monitoring larger spatial areas at a high frequency when compared to what is currently feasible through ground-based measurements. Hence, it can deliver a much improved synoptic view of the water environment. The new generation of Sentinel satellites (Sentinel-2a/b and Sentinel-3a/b) launched by the European Space Agency provide free and readily available images of the Earth at 0.01-0.3 km spatial resolution with a temporal sampling frequency between 1 and 5 days over the UK. This means more water bodies are now observable from space and patterns in water quality can be evaluated at catchment scales. For the first time, satellite remote sensing is relevant and useful to the environmental regulatory agencies. This fellowship aims to exploit the opportunity created by these recent advancements in satellite technology to deliver data solutions for routine water quality monitoring. The primary focus of the Knowledge Exchange Fellowship is to: (i) promote and facilitate the use of data products derived from satellite remote sensing; and (ii) implement data solutions into the day-to-day operations of the environment agencies.