Il sistema satellitare polare LANDSAT 8 OLI per il monitoraggio del Mar Piccolo di Taranto.

The multispectral data provided by the older TM5 and ETM Landsat polar sensors, despite their suitable ground resolution weren't widely applied for mapping the submerged vegetation and phytoplankton in the coastal and internal optically complexes shallow waters (typically case II waters), due mainly to their low SNR (Signal to noise Ratio) and consequent poor radiometric resolution (8 bit/pixel) which often didn't allow to obtain the required sensitivity. In the summer 2013 the new Landsat 8 NASA polar satellite carrying on board the OLI (Operational Land Imager) sensor was launched. This sensor respect to the previous ones of the Landsat family has improved acquisition bands in the visible, NIR, SWIR, TIR ranges and radiometry that offer a more reliable opportunity for operative monitoring of coastal shallow waters and ecosystems previously unavailable. In addition to the optical (RGB, NIR, SWIR, TIR) OLI spectral bands repositioning to improve their SNR, the new "coastal" deep blue channel was introduced to provide a more effective and systematic ocean color retrieving capability at higher spatial resolution in coastal and inland waters, typically recognized as case II waters. Therefore in order to preliminarily test the capabilities of the new OLI sensor for coastal monitoring, some multispectral images recorded in 2013 and 2014 on the lagoon of the Mar Piccolo of Taranto (Southern Italy) were exploited.