Remote sensing has been widely used for water quality monitoring, but most monitoring studies have only focused on a few water quality variables, such as chlorophyll-a, turbidity, and total suspended solids, which have typically been considered optically active variables. Remote sensing presents a challenge in estimating dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentration in water. DIN in inland waters and estuaries had been estimated from remotely sensed observations. However, remote-sensing estimation of DIN in seawater over a large area had not yet been performed. Moreover, the bands used to estimate DIN in water were limited to 4 or 7 anterior bands of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data at high spatial resolution rather than high spectral resolution. In this study, we attempted to establish a model to estimate DIN concentration in the Bohai Sea using band combinations derived from all the visible/near-infrared (Vis-NIR) bands of MODIS data. The results showed that regional multiple stepwise regression analysis (MLSR) yields a highly significant positive relationship between DIN concentration and certain remotely sensed combination variables. The modelling yielded higher accuracy for DIN concentration estimation in the Bohai Sea compared with previous studies. DIN concentration values showed a clear spatial variability, being high in coastal waters and relatively low further out. These results strongly suggest that the modelling demonstrates advantages for estimating DIN concentration in the Bohai Sea and has major potential for universal application in DIN concentration estimation in other waters.

An analysis of the effects of potential oil spills will provide data in support of decisions related to improving the response to oil spills and its emergency management. We selected the Chinese Bohai Sea, especially the Bohai Strait, as our investigation region to provide an assessment of the effects of pollution from ship-related oil spills on adjacent coastal zones. Ship-related accidents are one of the major factors causing potential oil spills in this area. A three dimensional oil transport and transformation model was developed using the Estuary, Coastal, and Ocean Model. This proposed model was run 90 times and each run lasted for 15days to simulate the spread and weathering processes of oil for each of four potential spill sites, which represented potential sites of ship collisions along heavy traffic lanes in the Bohai Sea. Ten neighboring coastal areas were also considered as target zones that potentially could receive pollutants once oil spilled in the study areas. The statistical simulations showed that spills in winter were much worse than those in summer; they resulted in very negative effects on several specific target zones coded Z7, Z8, Z9, and Z10 in this paper. In addition, sites S3 (near the Penglai city) and S4 (near the Yantai city) were the two most at-risk sites with a significantly high probability of pollution if spills occurred nearby during winter. The results thus provided practical guidelines for local oil spill prevention, as well as an emergency preparedness and response program.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-based environmental studies are gaining space in recent years due to their advantages of minimal cost, flexibility, and very high spatial resolution. Researchers can acquire imagery according to their schedule and convenience with the option of alternating the sensors working in visible, infrared, and microwave wavelengths. The recent developments in UAVs and in the associated image-processing techniques extend the fields of UAVs application. Inherent geometric deformation of UAVs images inevitably leads to burgeoning interest in exploring the geographical registration techniques of UAVs images preprocessing. However, atmospheric correction had been generally neglected due to the low altitudes of UAVs platforms. The path radiance of low-latitude atmosphere misleads the reflectance of target objects. Thus, a valid atmospheric correction is essential in the cases where vegetation indices (VIs) are adopted in vegetation monitoring. The off-the-shelf atmospheric correction algorithms adopted in satellite-based remote sensing are typically ill-suited for UAVs-based images due to the distinctly different altitudes and radiation transfer modes. This article identified the effect of atmospheric attenuation for spectral data collected by UAVs sensors of different altitudes and developed a physical-based atmospheric correction algorithm of UAVs images. Field-measured reflectance spectrum was essential in modelling. A sunny and dry day and a flat terrain were the two prerequisites to ensure the general application of the developed algorithm. A case study was subsequently carried out to verify the utility of the developed algorithm, and the results showed that VIs based on the UAVs images of different altitudes had a similar ability in vegetation assessment as ground-based recordings. However, the assessment accuracy could be clearly improved by using the developed atmospheric correction algorithm.

In this paper, two hydrodynamic models were developed using Delft3D and were then applied to the 2011 Penglai 19-3 accident in the Chinese Bohai Sea. One model includes constant temperature and salinity, while the other model utilizes variable temperature and salinity. The two models both simulate currents fields in the Bohai Sea and utilize wind data from the National Meteorological Service of Germany (DWD) to calculate the drift of spilled oil. The hydrodynamic simulation results are consistent with the results of previous studies. We subsequently predict the surface oil trajectories of the Penglai 19-3 oil spill based on the two models, respectively. Comparing the oil-spill simulation results with remote sensing information, we show that the model with variable temperature and salinity exhibits a better fit with the actual observations. Temperature and salinity were two important factors that influenced the movement of spilled oil on the sea surface. According to the result of the variable thermohaline model, most of the oil particles spread northwest and a small portion spreads southeast to the Chinese Bohai Strait. We conclude that density currents should be considered in future oil-spill studies to generate more realistic results.