Combined flooding and water quality monitoring during short extreme events using Sentinel 2: The case study of Gloria storm in Ebro Delta

Abstract

Short extreme events have significant impact on landscape and ecosystems in low-lying and exposed areas such as deltaic systems. In this context, this paper proposes a combined methodology for the mapping and monitoring of the flooding and water quality dynamics of coastal areas under extreme storms from Sentinel 2 imagery. The proposed methodology has been applied in a coastal bay of the Ebro Delta (Catalonia, NE Spain) to evaluate jointly the impact of Gloria storm (January 2020) in land-flooding and water quality. The experimental results show that the Gloria storm had a strong morphological impact and altered the water quality (chl-a) dynamics. The results show a recovery in terms of water quality after some weeks but in contrast the coastal morphology did not show the same degree of resilience. This paper is the first step of an overall goal that is to set the bases in a long term, for a workflow for rapid response and continuous monitoring of storm effects in coastal areas and/or highly valuable ecosystems such as the Ebro Delta.