Using medium and high resolution satellite images in monitoring water quality surrounding the discharges of desalination plants in the UAE

Today, various processes of seawater desalination are used to satisfy the increasing demand of fresh water. Desalination plants treat the seawater pumped from their intakes and discharge the generated waste back to the sea through their outfalls. The discharged waste, also called brine, has a high salinity level, high temperature and high concentration of other suspended matters which may cause negative environmental effects on the water quality surrounding the discharge point. In this paper, medium and high resolution satellite data collected by MODIS and DubaiSat-1 (DS-1), respectively, were used to derive average digital value and its spatial variability surrounding Jebel Ali plant. Satellite-derived sea surface temperature (SST) was derived and compared to field measured temperature collected between January and December 2008. In order to have a better understanding of the spectral and spatial characteristics of satellite data, the mean squared error (MSE) and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) were also calculated for different locations in the study area with determined window's size. Structural Similarity (SSIM) factor was used to compare two locations, one with pollution and the other without pollution.