Chlorophyll a multi-temporal analysis in coastal waters with MODIS data

The availability of a nearly-continuous remotely-sensed chlorophyll 'a' maps (Chl a) from MODIS sensor, now longer than ten years, enables the assessment of multi-temporal trends for several locations around the world. In this paper the statistical method of the Support Vector Machine (SVM) has been applied to 5 years of MODIS data in order to generate Chl a maps. A Chl a multi-temporal analysis of Apulian region coastal zones in Southern Italy shows a positive trend in two test cases, confirming the increase of productivity in Southern Adriatic region found in the last years and demonstrating the simplicity and usefulness of this technique