Archival remote sensing imagery were used to reconstruct seagrass coverage and turbidity time-series for Western Port, Victoria. This enables investigation of the extent to which seagrass coverage and bay turbidity are, and have been, sensitive to river discharge and suspended solids or climatic fluctuations. Furthermore, the use of remote sensing to derive physical parameters that can be used to calibrate a hydrodynamic model is a new and novel approach, compared with the more traditional methods of model calibration using in-situ measurements.

Based on the relationship between the satellite derived reflectance and the inherent optical properties of the water column, semi-empirical algorithms can be derived for these optically complex waters to provide estimates of bathymetry, substrate composition and water quality information. The application of these methods for multispectral satellite imagery analysis has several limitations, however, the benefit of the underlying hyperspectral models have been found to produce better results compared with alternative methods. Multi-temporal data from the Australian Geoscience Data Cube (AGDC) when combined with the optical modelling approach enables consistent large scale spatio-temporal analysis of seagrass extent and of coastal water quality. These analyses are used in support of catchment sediment load analysis, hydrodynamic modelling and seagrass modelling activities, which are reported in separate abstracts.