Long term monitoring and analysis of chlorophyll a and primary production in Kentucky Lake using in situ and remotely sensed data

Reservoirs provide many important benefits. Long term monitoring of vital water quality parameters, for example chlorophyll a and primary production, can provide important insight into the health and productivity of the reservoir. Having the ability to monitor the levels of chlorophyll a and primary production in a reservoir over a long period of time can be very useful in managing the resources of the reservoir and studying the changes that take place within it over time. Being able to take this long term data and spatially interpolate it over the area of a reservoir can prove to be an invaluable tool to more fully understand and more efficiently monitor reservoirs.;By using long term in situ data in conjunction with Landsat TM data, spatial interpolation for chlorophyll a was made possible with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately primary productivity values were not able to be used in such a way due to their inherent nature of representing rates of carbon assimilation over time rather than the discrete values of chlorophyll a. However, by finding and utilizing a statistical linear relationship between primary productivity rates and chlorophyll a concentrations over the nearly 25 year long history of monitoring in Kentucky Lake, spatial interpolation of primary productivity became possible.;Three dates were chosen to represent the entirety of the Kentucky Lake Monitoring Program for the spatial interpolation of the two water quality parameters. Results of the chlorophyll a and primary production mapping for the three dates showed a success for the method of spatial interpolation of primary productivity rates.