Remote Sensing Indicators for Assessing the Trophic Status of Barrier Lakes from Bahlui Catchment (Romania)

Maintaining good quality fresh water is essential to support its functions, including human consumption and environmental health. This could be possible through Sentinel 2 imagery provided by the European Space Agency. The analyzed barrier lakes are Parcovaci, Tansa, and Podu Iloaiei, which have an accumulated water volume of 5, 13.1, and 13.4 mil.m3, respectively. Monitoring water quality in these accumulations is a necessity to protect stored water from various forms of pollution, chlorophyll-a (Chl-a), total suspended matter (TSM), and turbidity (TU) being key indicators of the water’s ecological status. The present study analyzes thirteen Sentinel 2 images acquired between 2017 and 2020, for March–November, to evaluate water quality parameters. The water surface has been divided into three sections: tail, middle, and head. After analyses, it was found that the ecological potential was moderate or good, mostly maintained as moderate potential in terms of oxygen and nutrient regimes. The seasonality of the chlorophyll content, the amount of suspended matter, and the color are in accordance with the geomorphological features, the sediment budget, the land use, and the hydroclimatic parameters and with the main ecological and anthropogenic pressure factors of water quality. The result suggests that the indicators derived from remote sensing techniques represent an excellent information resource (significant R2 between 0.62 and 0.96) that can be used for complex and forecasting assessments of the trophic status of barrier lakes.