International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Applied Earth

Observations and Geoinformation
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jag

Landsat observations of chlorophyll-a variations in Lake Taihu from 1984

to 2019
Zhigang Cao a, b, c, Ronghua Ma a, *, John M. Melack c, Hongtao Duan a, Miao Liu d, Tiit Kutser e,
Kun Xue a, Ming Shen a, b, Tianci Qi a, b, Huili Yuan f
a
Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
b
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
c
Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
d
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Environmental Engineering, Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Environmental Science, Nanjing 210036, China
e
Estonian Marine Institute, University of Tartu, Tallinn 12618, Estonia
f
Jinling Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211169, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Long-term datasets of chlorophyll-a (Chla) are necessary to evaluate changes in eutrophication and to assist in
Landsat lake management; however, current aquatic remote sensing datasets usually start after 2000. Here, a 36-year
Eutrophication Chla dataset was assembled from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+),
Satellite
and Operational Landsat Imager (OLI) imagery for Lake Taihu (China) over the period from 1984 to 2019. TM,
Climate warming
Machine learning
ETM+ and OLI reflectances were compared to those using the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on Terra, and agreement was found within a mean absolute difference of 15%. An algorithm for Chla
retrieval developed by a machine learning approach (XGBoost) had good performance (mean absolute per­
centage error = 35%, mean absolute error = 9%) and outperformed random forest and support vector machine
regressors and existing empirical algorithms for Lake Taihu. Landsat-derived mean Chla ranged between 12.8 µg
L-1 and 32.3 µg L-1 and indicates that Lake Taihu has been eutrophic from 1984 to 2019. Chla in the northern
region was higher than that in other areas over the 36 years. With the limited number of Landsat images each
year, we found that the annual variation in Chla had high values during the periods of 1984–1992 and
1994–1997 and significant increases in 1999–2009 and from 2012 to 2019. The spatial and temporal variations
in Chla for Lake Taihu were correlated with dissolved nutrients and air temperature. This research illustrates the
use of machine learning approaches to generate long-term datasets of water quality from multiple Landsat in­
struments, for extending watercolor archives for lakes.

1. Introduction Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS, 2003–2012), and Ocean Land

Lakes and reservoirs are being modified by the climate change and
human activities (Woolway et al. 2020), which is evident from intensi­
fied eutrophication and widespread phytoplankton blooms worldwide
(Ho et al. 2019). To track the changes and develop effective manage­
ment strategies to control lake eutrophication, sufficiently long limno­
logical datasets to elucidate the natural variations introduced by
multiyear climatic changes and complex hydrogeological and anthro­
pogenic processes are needed (Cao et al. 2017; Kosten et al. 2012; Sass
et al. 2007). With ocean color instruments, such as the MODerate res­
olution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) (2000-present), MEdium
Colour Instrument (OLCI, 2016 ~ ), the ocean color community has
developed a number of state-of-the-art algorithms to monitor lake en­
vironments (Hu et al. 2010; Kutser et al. 2005; Pahlevan et al. 2020).
However, most research on lake remote sensing with MODIS, MERIS,
and OLCI cannot provide data before 2000 (e.g., (Guan et al. 2020; Hu
et al. 2010; Palmer et al. 2015)).
Landsat provides relatively high spatial resolution (30 m) imagery
with the Thematic Mapper (TM, 1984–2010), Enhanced Thematic
Mapper plus (ETM+, 1999-present), Operational Land Imager (OLI,
2013-present) since 1984 (Wulder et al. 2019). These instruments
permit the compilation of up to four-decade of images, extending

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: rhma@niglas.ac.cn (R. Ma).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102642
Received 7 July 2021; Received in revised form 21 November 2021; Accepted 30 November 2021
Available online 16 December 2021
1569-8432/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Z. Cao et al.
temporal coverage of ocean color satellite archives. To date, Landsat
data have been used to retrieve Chla, water clarity, suspended particu­
late matter (SPM), and colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) in
lakes (Dekker and Peters 1993; Kutser 2012; Sass et al. 2007). Among
these variables, Chla is related to phytoplankton biomass and can be
used to indicate trophic status. In ocean waters, the OCx algorithm based
on the blue and green bands have been used to estimate Chla from
MODIS, MERIS, and OLCI measurements (O’Reilly and Werdell 2019).
These band ratio algorithms typically perform poorly Chla retrievals in
turbid waters (Neil et al. 2019), resulting from the impacts of other
nonalgal materials on Chla signals (McKee et al. 2007). A number of
state-of-the-art algorithms have been developed to overcome the prob­
lems in coastal and inland waters (Gilerson et al. 2010; Gons et al. 2002;
Gurlin et al. 2011; Neil et al. 2019; Smith et al. 2018) using the red-edge
bands (700–710 nm) (Gitelson 1992). However, Landsat instruments
lack spectral coverage in the red-edge band. Furthermore, Landsat TM
and ETM+ have low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) which are not optimal
for aquatic observations. Likewise, the broad bandwidths diminish the
sharpness of spectral features on which remote sensing of water con­
stituents relies (Cao et al., 2019; Dekker et al., 1992).
Past studies often employed band combinations, such as the ratio
between blue and green, the ratio between the near infrared and red
band, and normalized difference index (Dekker 1993; Giardino et al.
2001; Ha et al. 2017; Shi et al. 2015; Watanabe et al. 2017), to develop
empirical algorithms to estimate Chla in lakes from Landsat data. These
Fig. 1. Lake Taihu and the stations of field surveys. Eight subregions are indicated. The blue area was the investigated in the study. Gray areas, including the
southeast of Gonghu Bay, Xukou Bay, and east Lake Taihu, denote the areas with macrophytes, and these regions were usually excluded in this study.
2
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642
algorithms were developed in specific lakes and may not apply to other
lakes with different optical properties. Recently, machine learning
techniques that utilize optimized mathematical computations have been
used to retrieve Chla from Landsat instruments (Cao et al. 2020; Kravitz
et al. 2021; Smith et al. 2021). Though machine learning approaches are
empirical, they do provide alternative means for Chla retrievals from
multispectral measurements in complex waters (Sagan et al. 2020).
Our research aims to generate a long-term Chla dataset in turbid
waters using Landsat instruments to elucidate how trophic state varied
over that period. Lake Taihu was selected as the study site. With an area
of 2338 km2 and an average depth of 1.9 m (Fig. 1), Lake Taihu is a
typical eutrophic lake with complex optical properties (Duan et al.
2012). Lake Taihu was mesotrophic in the 1960s and has become pro­
gressively more eutrophic since the 1980s (Qin et al. 2007), raising a
scientific and practical demand to obtain a data archive to manage the
lake effectively. Specifically, we aim to:
(1) evaluate the radiometric differences among TM, ETM+, and OLI,
to address the impacts of these differences on Chla retrieval;
(2) retrieve Chla from Landsat data and generate a long-term Chla
dataset for Lake Taihu from 1984 to 2019;
(3) analyze spatial and seasonal variations using satellite-derived
Chla and relate its variability to cyanobacterial blooms, nutrient avail­
ability, and meteorological conditions to further understand Lake Taihu.
Z. Cao et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642

2. Dataset 2.2. Landsat data

We employed four types of data in this study: (1) Landsat TM, ETM+, A total of 375 cloud-free Landsat-5 TM, Landsat-7 ETM+, and
and OLI data from 1984 to 2019 were utilized to retrieve Chla in Lake Landsat-8 OLI Level-1 (L1) images over Lake Taihu from 1984 to 2019
Taihu; (2) field measured Chla to develop the machine learning model; were downloaded from the United States Geological Survey. We ob­
(3) Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) and MODIS tained 170 scenes of TM for 1984–2011, 156 scenes of ETM + for
Terra data to evaluate the radiometric consistency between Landsat 1999–2019, and 49 OLI scenes for 2013–2019 (Fig. 2). The absorption of
instruments; (4) other water quality parameters and meteorological data ozone and water vapor and Rayleigh scattering were removed to
to analyze the spatiotemporal variations in Chla in Lake Taihu. generate the Rayleigh-corrected reflectance (Rrc, dimensionless) (Eq.
(1)) using the ACOLITE software. The gains of TM, ETM+, and OLI were
2.1. Field data set to unity in the processing. Since the band centers of TM, ETM+, and
OLI are different (Table S1), we used band name to represent the
A number of field campaigns were conducted from 1992 to 2017 to wavelegnth (e.g., Rrc(Blue) denotes Rrc(4 8 6), Rrc(4 7 9), and Rrc(4 8 3)
collect water quality parameters in Lake Taihu (Table 1). Due to the for TM, ETM+, and OLI, respectively).
different data sources, these data were named as Dataset 1 (DS1) and Clouds and land pixels were identified using a threshold in the
Dataset 2 (DS2) (Fig. 1): DS1 includes six field surveys carried out SWIR2 band (Vanhellemont and Ruddick 2015). To remove the pixels
simultaneously with Landsat 8 overpasses (Table S2), and DS2 is near the land possibly containmined by the land adjacency effect, five
monthly field measurements done from 1992 to 2015 by the Taihu Lake water pixels near the land were excluded following several attempts to
Laboratory Ecosystem Research Station (THLLER). examine the variations in Rrc from nearshore to off-shore (Feng et al.
DS1 and DS2 employed the same methods to measure water con­ 2012). Pixels with cyanobacteria scums in Landsat images were
stinuents. Near-surface water samples (~50 cm) were filtered through excluded using a threshold of the floating-algae index (FAI) (i.e.,
glass fiber filters (0.70 μm pore size, Whatman GF/F), and Chla con­ − 0.005), which was determined by visual interpretation of pixels with
centration was spectrophotometrically determined using a Shimadzu cyanobacterial scums (Hu et al. 2010). Data with strip noise in ETM+
UV2700 spectrophotometer after extraction of pigments using 90% images since 2003 were regared as invalid and were excluded. Because
acetone (Jeffrey and Humphrey 1975). SPM concentrations were the eastern Taihu has large amounts of submerged macrophytes (Fig. 1),
gravimetrically determined from samples collected on precombusted we excluded this region in the development and application of the al­
and pre-weighed GF/F filters that were dried at 105 ◦ C for 4 h (Cao et al. gorithm for Chla estimation.
2017). TN and TP were assayed by alkaline potassium persulfate
digestion followed by the ammonium molybdate spectrophotometric 2.3. HICO and MODIS data
method for phosphorus and UV spectrophotometric method for
nitrogen. HICO samples selected coastal regions at 90 m with full spectral
We initially obtained 515 matchups with Landsat 5/7/8 overpasses coverage (380 to 960 nm sampled at 5.7 nm) and a high signal-to-noise
from DS1 and DS2. We visually excluded the matchups contaminated by ratio. We obtained 14 cloud-free HICO images from 2010 to 2014 of
clouds, cloud shadows, sun glint, and cyanobacterial scums using false- Lake Taihu and processed them to Rrc using the SeaWiFS Data Analysis
color composite images. Matchups with the time difference between in System (SeaDAS). The HICO-derived Rrc was employed to simulate the
situ samples and satellite overpass > ±6h were removed. A spatial ho­ band-averaged Rrc of TM, ETM+, and OLI based on the relative spectral
mogeneity test using a 3 × 3 pixel window (variable coefficient < 10%) responses.
was used to further qualify the data. In total, 234 matchups were ob­ MODIS Terra (MODIST) data were used to examine the difference in
tained to train the model: 96 OLI, 95 ETM+, and 43 TM matchups Rrc among TM, ETM+, and OLI, because Terra has a similar equatorial
(Table S2). crossing time (~10:30 AM) to that of the Landsat series (~10:00 AM).
Daily temperature (◦ C), precipitation (mm), and wind speed (m s− 1) Daily MODIST Level-0 data over Lake Taihu in 2000–2019 were
at the Dongshan meteorological station (Fig. 1) near Lake Taihu from downloaded from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
1984 to 2019 were downloaded from the National Meteorological In­ (NASA) ocean color archives (https://oceandata.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/).
formation Center, China (http://data.cma.cn). Level-0 data were processed to Rrc(λ) using SeaDAS and subsequently
resampled to a spatial resolution of 250 m using a sharpening method
(Pohl and Van Genderen 1998). The Rrc of SeaDAS might have a slight
difference from that of ACOLITE because SeaDAS includes surface
Fresnel reflectance in calculating Rayleigh reflectance while ACOLITE
does not.
Table 1
Limnological variables for Lake Taihu from 1992 to 2017. TN and TP data from
3. Methodology
1992 to 2015 were used while other water quality parameters only included
concurrent matchups with Landsat. Std: standard deviation; Q25 and Q75 are the
1st quartile and 3rd quartile, respectively. 3.1. Assessment of Rrc from Landsat instruments
N Mean Range Median Q25-Q75 Period
± Std. The Rrc comparison among TM, ETM+ and OLI simulated using
HICO Rrc had good agreements (Fig. S1; Table S3), indicating that the
Chla 163 27.8 ± 1.4–99.1 20.8 11.7–39.6 2003–2017
(µg 20.2
spectral differences did not have significant impacts on band-averaged
L-1) Rrc. Since simulated Rrc overlooked atmospheric effects and view ge­
SPM 163 52.7 ± 2.1–250.0 40.0 21.6–69.3 2003–2017 ometry, MODIS Rrc data were further used to evaluate the agreement of
(µg 44.8 Rrc among Landsat sensors as a bridge. Several criteria were employed
L-1)
for quality control to generate Landsat-MODIST data pairs. (1) The mean
TN 4001 3.34 ± 0.02–86.3 2.66 1.69–4.21 1992–2015
(mg 2.69 value with a coefficient of variation < 10% in 3 × 3 element windows of
L-1) MODIST were used to screen matchups, while Landsat matchups were
TP 4001 0.143 0.005–6.8 0.103 0.068–0.163 1992–2015 calculated from 25 × 25-element windows to match MODIST element
(mg ± window. (2) MODIST pixels with viewing zenith angles (VZAs) > 60◦
L-1) 0.219
were excluded. (3) We only used matchups within a time difference of

3
Z. Cao et al.
Fig. 2. Temporal distributions of Landsat data used in this study.
±1 h. The coordinates of 21 stations in DS2 were used to extract MODIST
and Landsat data pairs to evaluate consistency between MODIST and
TM/ETM+/OLI. Several statistical metrics defined in section 3.5 were
used to quantify the difference between point pairs: median absolute
percentage errors, mean absolute error, and Bias. Based on the evalua­
tion of Rrc agreement, the impact of differences in Rrc on Chla retrievals
though the BST model was subsequently evaluated (section 4.2).
3.2. Machine learning model to estimate Chla
A machine learning model, the extreme gradient boosting method,
XGBoost (BST) (Chen and Guestrin 2016), was used to develop the
model to estimate Chla in Lake Taihu from TM, ETM+, and OLI mea­
surements (Chen and Guestrin 2016). The BST is a scalable and flexible
boosting tree model, that integrates many trees with different depths to
build a robust classifier or predictor. The BST model has been demon­
strated to perform satisfactorily for retrieving Chla in the lakes in eastern
China from OLI data (Cao et al. 2020).
The development of BST model to estimate Chla from Rrc of Landsat
TM/ETM+/OLI were divided into four steps: (1) the generation of
training and validation dataset from matchups; (2) the selection of input
features; (3) the determination of hyperparameters; (4) the validation of
model performance with an independent dataset.
A total of 234 matchups mentioned above were randomly divided
into two datasets: training (n = 140) and validation datasets (n = 94).
The BST model used ten input variables, including Rrc(Blue), Rrc(Green),
Rrc(Red), Rrc(NIR), and Rrc(SWIR1), four band-ratios (i.e., Rrc(Blue)/
Rrc(Green), Rrc(Red)/Rrc(Green), Rrc(NIR)/Rrc(Green), and Rrc(NIR)/
Rrc(Red)), and FAI. Cao et al. (2020) has shown that the model structures
using the derived features of Rrc(SWIR1) and four band-ratios relevant to
Chla estimations could improve the performance significantly. Kravitz
et al. (2021) demonstrated that the 443 nm spectral band is useful in
Chla estimation in eutrophic lakes. However, we did not use this band to
have consistency in the data, as TM and ETM+ were not equipped with
this band. Moreover, Lake Taihu is eutrophic, turbid and rich in CDOM;
therefore, the water-leaving signal in the blue band is not sensitive to the
variability in Chla (Duan et al. 2012).
Before the training model, Rrc(SWIR2) was subtracted from Rrc in the
blue, green, red, NIR, and SWIR1 bands to remove the partial aerosol
signal from Rrc (Feng et al. 2018). All input features were standardized
by removing the mean and scaling to unit variance, and the output
variable (i.e., Chla) was transformed to log10 space (Smith et al. 2021).
The choices of hyperparameter determine the robustness of the
model and control the overfitting. Several hyperparameters need to be
tuned in the XGBoost model, including the type of booster that is
modeled, as well as typical machine learning hyperparameters (e.g.,
learning rate, maximum depth, and regularization coefficients). With
the GridSearch method in Python, we found that a 7-layer gbtree model
with a 0.05 learning rate, 0.60 subsample rate, and 0.05 L1 regulari­
zation coefficient obtained the best estimation. A 5-fold cross-validation
4
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642
was employed to evaluate the performance of each model, ensuring that
the training dataset did not significantly influence the performance of
the model. The same training data are used for all trials.
In addition, we developed two other algorithms for Chla estimation
with the random forest (RF) and support vector machine regressor (SVR)
to compare with the performance of XGBoost model. RF is a type of
ensemble learning that combines many weighted regression trees to
predict outputs via the votes of prediction from each regression tree
(Shen et al. 2020). SVM employs a kernel function to map input features
to hyperspace and fits an optimal hyperplane to obtain the functions
relevant to the output variable (Mountrakis et al. 2011). RF and SVR
have been employed to estimate water properties (Sagan et al. 2020;
Shen et al. 2020), including Chla (Guan et al. 2020). We used the same
input variables and training dataset to train RF and SVR models, and the
hyperparameters were determined by the strategy of grid search.
3.3. Eutrophication intensity
The BST model did not retrieve Chla in the pixels covered by the
cyanobacterial scums. For a comprehensive evaluation for the trophic
status in Lake Taihu, two indices were further employed to evaluate
eutrophication in Lake Taihu. First, the cyanobacterial bloom frequency
(CBF) was defined as the ratio (in %) of cyanobacterial pixels relative to
the total available pixels (Hu et al. 2010). Then, the eutrophication in­
tensity (EI) was employed using cyanobacterial scums and Chla (Eqs. (1)
and (2)). EI is regarded as 1 for cyanobacterial scum pixels; otherwise, EI
was normalized to 0–1 based on the trophic status index (TSI).
{
1, algal bloom = True
EI = (1)
χ , algal bloom = False
⎧
⎪
⎨ 1, if TSI(Chla) ≥ 70
χ= (2)
⎪
⎩
TSI(Chla)
, if TSI(Chla). < 70
70
3.4. Sensitivity analysis
The difference of Rrc among TM, ETM+, and OLI may affect the
performance of the BST model for Chla estimation and disturb the
consistency in the time series of Chla. Here, we used the Sobol method to
calculate a global sensitivity index (Sobol 2001) to address how uncer­
tainty in the Chla retrievals responds to input Rrc in our machine
learning model. The sensitivity of the BST model was evaluated in two
scenarios: (1) according to the results of consistency evaluation, un­
certainties of 10%, 15%, 10%, 20%, 10%, and 10% for Rrc(Blue),
Rrc(Green), Rrc(Red), Rrc(NIR), Rrc(SWIR1), and Rrc(SWIR2) were used
to evaluate the impact of input variables on Chla retrievals. (2) To
evaluate the impact of Rrc at each band on Chla retrievals, we generated
an uncertainty array ranging between 5% and 30% with a 5% interval
for each band. Specifically, we employed the framework recommended
Z. Cao et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642

by Saltelli et al. (2010) to supplement sensitivity analysis. In every Table 2

scenario, one thousand samples for each Rrc spectrum in the validation Statistical metrics of the random forest (RF), XGBoost, and support vector ma­
dataset with uncertainty were simulated under Gaussian distribution. chine regressor (SVR) models on the validation dataset for TM, ETM+, and OLI.
These simulated datasets were subsequently used to retrieve Chla Shi(2015) model was recalibrated using the same training dataset of machine
through the BST model. Finally, we calculated the sensitivity index and learning models. RMSE is μg L-1, MAPE is percentages, and MAE and Bias are
converted into relative difference following their definitions.
uncertainty of the simulated Chla, to compare the “actual” Chla of the
examined Rrc spectrum. Sensor RF XGBoost SVR Shi(2015)

TM (n ¼ 19) RMSE 14.4 14.7 17.6 20.1

MAPE (%) 18.3 30.2 46.5 51.4
3.5. Statistical metrics
MAE (%) 8.9 11.5 13.4 16.1
Bias (%) − 5.8 − 1.3 3.1 0.3
The root-mean-square error (RMSE) (Eq. (3)), mean absolute per­ ETMþ (n ¼ 38) RMSE 13.8 12.9 18.7 23.9
centage error (MAPE) (Eq. (4)), Bias (system error) (Eq. (5)), and mean MAPE (%) 44.1 34.8 37.7 118.8
MAE (%) 7.7 7.2 8.4 20.4
absolute error (MAE) (Eq. (6)) were used to perform statistical analyses.
Bias (%) − 0.8 − 4.5 − 0.5 18.7
MAE and Bias were calculated as numbers, which could be converted to OLI (n ¼ 37) RMSE 14.9 15.7 15.6 16.8
the relative difference in percentage (Seegers et al. 2018). MAPE (%) 33.8 35.2 32.2 31.2
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅ MAE (%) 10.7 11.6 13.1 12.8
1 ∑ n
Bias (%) − 2.8 − 0.4 1.0 3.8
RMSE = (xi − yi )2 (3)
n i=1
measurements.
1∑n
MAPE = 100 × [(xi − yi )/xi ] (4) The XGBoost model also outperformed several proposed empirical
n i=1
algorithms based on the MODIS Rrc spectral index in retrieving Chla (Shi
(∑n ) et al. 2015). This model was calibrated using the same training dataset of
i=1 (log10 (xi ) − log10 (yi ))
Bias = 10ˆ (5) aforementioned machine learning approaches. The recalibrated Shi
n
(2015) model had lower performance than XGBoost model (MAPE =
(∑n ) 55%, MAE = 1.2 (20%), Bias = 1.1 (10%)). In addition, several band
i=1 |log10 (xi ) − log10 (yi )|
MAE = 10ˆ (6) ratios used previous studies that were proposed to estimate Chla from
n
Landsat imagery in other areas were evaluated (Ha et al. 2017; Tebbs
where n is the number of data pairs, the subscript i denotes individual et al. 2013; Watanabe et al. 2017), and the results were not satisfactory
data points, and x and y represent the measured and estimated values. (MAPE > 100%, MAE > 3).

4. Results 4.2. Impact of Rrc agreement on the algorithm

4.1. Algorithm performance
RF and XGBoost models outperformed the SVR model to estimate
Chla for the training and validation datasets (Fig. 3; Table 2), although
all three models underestimatedpoints with Chla > 60 µg L-1 and over­
estimated points with Chla < 10 µg L-1 (Fig. 3). Overall, the XGBoost
model had slightly better accuracy on validation dataset (MAPE = 35%,
MAE = 9%, Bias = -1 %) than RF model, in particular for low Chla
around 10 μg L-1. The accuracy of XGBoost estimating Chla from ETM+
was slightly higher than that for TM and OLI (Table 2), yet the model has
acceptable performance on retrieving Chla from each instrument
(MAPE < 35%; MAE < 12%). As such, XGBoost model was regarded as
the optimal model in Chla retrievals for Lake Taihu from Landsat
Overall, the matchups between Landsat and MODIST had similar Rrc
in Lake Taihu (Fig. 4), while ETM+ had better consistency with MODIST
than TM and OLI (Table 3). The red band was most consistent between
MODIS- and Landsat-derived Rrc, yet some OLI-derived Rrc(λ) samples
were slightly underestimated compared to MODIST. Overall, the visible
bands had Rrc close to MODIST (blue band: MAPE = 4.04%, green band:
MAPE = 9.17%, red band: MAPE = 5.73%, Fig. 4a, b, c), whereas the Rrc
of Landsat in the NIR band had a relatively large difference from
MODIST (MAPE = 12.57%, Fig. 4d). ETM + -derived Rrc(λ) had
consistent distributions with the MODIST at all bands due to close
overpass time and similar operation orbit (Fig. 4 and Table 3).
To understand the impacts of difference in Rrc on the Chla retrievals,
the Sobol sensitivity index was employed to evaluate the influence of

Fig. 3. (a) Performance of the random forest, XGBoost, and support vector machine regressor (SVR) model for Chla estimation from Landsat measurements on the
training (n = 140) and validation (n = 94) datasets in Lake Taihu. The statistical metrics of the algorithms on TM, ETM+, and OLI are tabulated in Table 2. The blue
and red lines indicate the regression lines between measured and estimate Chla on the training and validation dataset, respectively.

5
Z. Cao et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642

Fig. 4. Comparisons between Rrc at ~480 nm (a), ~560 nm (b), ~650 nm (c), and ~860 nm(d) derived from MODIS Terra and Landsat instruments from 2000 to
2019 in Lake Taihu.

Table 3
Statistical metrics for the comparison between MODIST- and TM/ETM+/OLI-derived Rrc at four bands.
R2 MAPE(%) MAE Bias R2 MAPE(%) MAE Bias

Blue TM 0.59 11.0 1.2 1.1 Green TM 0.52 12.6 1.2 1.2
ETM+ 0.91 3.6 1.1 1.0 ETM+ 0.89 8.6 1.1 1.1
OLI 0.32 14.5 1.2 1.1 OLI 0.38 22.5 1.3 1.3
Red TM 0.53 11.8 1.2 1.1 NIR TM 0.37 18.5 1.2 1.1
ETM+ 0.94 5.3 1.1 1.1 ETM+ 0.87 11.6 1.1 0.9
OLI 0.44 21.5 1.3 1.2 OLI 0.58 29.6 1.5 1.4

input variables on the Chla estimation in the BST model. Based on the
differences in Rrc between TM, ETM + and OLI (Fig. 4), the simulated
Chla retrievals had an average MAE of 1.17 (i.e., 17%), MAPE of 17.6%
and the Bias of 1.05 (i.e., +5%) relative to the original Chla retrievals
with the BST model (Fig. 5a). Moreover, the impacts of Rrc (NIR) and Rrc
(Red) on the Chla retrievals were larger than those of Rrc(Blue) and
Rrc(Green) (Fig. 5a). Regarding the influence of each band on Chla
estimation, the uncertainty of estimated Chla was less than 16.5% for Rrc
at each band even though it had 35% uncertainty (Fig. 5b).
4.3. Variations in Chla and trophic state
4.3.1. Interannual variation
The cloud-free Landsat-derived Chla values for each year were used
to estimate annual mean Chla in Lake Taihu (Fig. 6; Fig. 7). The number
of images each year is shown in Fig. 2. Given that a limited number of
Landsat images are available each year, the mean Chla in 3-year in­
tervals from 1984 to 2019 were also mapped (Fig. 8). Overall, the annual
average Landsat-derived Chla for the entire lake from 1984 to 2019 was
22.9 ± 6.1 µg L-1, overall ranging between 12.8 µg L-1 (in 1986) and 29.9
µg L-1 (in 1992). From 1984 to 2019, annual mean Chla had four high
periods (Fig. 7a), with large increases from 1984 to 1992 (9.6 µg L-1
decade-1) and from 1994 to 1997 (29.4 µg L-1 decade-1), and slight in­
creases from 1999 to 2009 (1.9 µg L-1 decade-1) and from 2012 to 2019
(2.5 µg L-1 decade-1) (Fig. 6; Fig. 7a). Northern bays had severe cyano­
bacterial blooms so that Chla also significantly increased from 1999 to
2005 (11.8 µg L-1 decade-1). Mean Chla over 3-year intervals from 1984
to 2019 had similar trends (Fig. S2a).
Due to removing the pixels with cyanobacterial scums in Lake Taihu,
Landsat-derived Chla may not reflect the comprehensive eutrophic
variations in Lake Taihu. Fig. 7b shows that the cyanobacterial bloom
frequency (CBF) has significantly increased from 1984 to 2019 (Fig. 7b)
(R2 = 0.59, p < 0.01), suggesting that high phytoplankton biomass
intensified over the past 36 years (Fig. 7b). The CBF in the northern bays
exceeded 20%, and central Taihu had <10% CBF (Fig. 7b). Eutrophic
intensity (EI) had a slight difference from Chla (Fig. 7c) due to EI
incorporating cyanobacterial blooms. Overall, the annual mean EI
ranged between 0.73 and 0.89, with a mean of 0.82 ± 0.04. Although EI

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Z. Cao et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642

Fig. 5. (a) Sensitivity of Rrc in six bands to Chla prediction in the BST model with given uncertainties of 10%, 15%, 10%, 20%, 10%, and 10%, respectively. (b)
Variations in the uncertainties of Chla retrievals from the BST model with increased uncertainty of Rrc at each band.

Fig. 6. Landsat-derived annual mean Chla in Lake Taihu from 1984 to 2019.

7
Z. Cao et al.
Fig. 7. Long-term variations in Landsat-derived annual mean Chla (a), cyanobacterial bloom frequency (CBF) (b), eutrophic intensity (c), and in situ annual mean TN
and TP (d) in different regions of Lake Taihu from 1984 to 2019.
had similar annual mean variations to Chla from 1984 to 2019, EI had a
more significant increase in the northern and western waters since 2007
than Chla (Fig. 6c; Fig. 8). The mean CBF and EI of 3-year intervals from
1984 to 2019 had similar trends with the annual mean CBF and EI,
respectively (Figs. S2b and S2c).
4.3.2. Seasonal variation
Chla in Lake Taihu from 1984 to 2019 had distinct seasonal varia­
tions with the highest seasonal mean value in summer (24.9 ± 6.9 µg L-1)
and lowest in winter (20.9 ± 3.6 µg L-1) (Fig. 9a; Fig. 10). The peak of
monthly mean Chla in Lake Taihu was in September (26.8 µg L-1), and
the lowest Chla occurred in March (20.1 µg L-1) (Fig. 9a). The highest
Chla in northern and western Taihu occurred in August, with means of
35.3 µg L-1 and 31.6 µg L-1, respectively; yet central and southern Taihu
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642
had the highest Chla in September with means of 24.5 µg L-1 and 25.7 µg
L-1, respectively (Fig. 9a).
The monthly mean CBF in 1984–2019 also had high values in sum­
mer (32%) and low values in winter (3%) (Fig. 9b). Overall, Taihu had a
high CBF from April (11%) to October (11%), particularly in the
northern bays (15%-17%) and western regions (8%-12%) (Fig. 9b). The
monthly mean EI had a higher value in summer (0.85 ± 0.05) and
autumn (0.83 ± 0.04) than in spring (0.86 ± 0.04) and winter (0.80 ±
0.02) (Fig. 9c). The low Chla and EI that occurred in northern and
central regions in July may result from the removals of pixels with
cyanobacterial blooms.
Z. Cao et al.
Fig. 8. Landsat derived mean Chla in Lake Taihu in three-year intervals from 1984 to 2019.
5. Discussion
5.1. Evaluation of the agreement of Rrc
Ideally, the assessment of the agreement of Rrc among TM, ETM+
and OLI should be based on their same-day overlapped images. Unfor­
tunately, TM, ETM+ and OLI did not have same-day overpasses due to
different orbits. For indirect intercomparison between instruments, it
would be better to use concurrent matchups with similar spatial reso­
lutions, spectral settings and observational environments. As such, our
evaluation of the consistency of Rrc between Landsat instruments and
MODIST has several weaknesses. Different satellite sensors had different
spectral settings (band centers and bandwidths), and we did not adjust
the band centers in the intercomparisons between MODIST and TM,
ETM+, and OLI. Current matchups of Rrc between MODIST and Landsat
instruments were within 1 h; therefore, the impact of SZA is minor.
Examination with closer time windows did improve consistency (data
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642
not shown here), yet we made a trade-off to retain more matchups be­
tween MODIST and TM/OLI. Regarding the effect of VZA, TM, ETM+,
and OLI had nadir observations, whereas MODIST did not, possibly
leading to differences in Rrc. In particular, MODIS pixels with high VZA
had a spatial resolution of more than 250 m, mismatching the 25 × 25
Landsat pixels. Although we would have preferred to use near nadir
MODIS pixels (e.g., VZA < 10◦ ), the average VZA of MODIST in Lake
Taihu between 2000 and 2019 was 43◦ , ranging between 0◦ -65◦ (25%
quantile − 75% quantile: 24◦ -56◦ ). To minimize such a difference, we
excluded MODIST pixels of high VZA (>60◦ ) following the protocol of
the ocean color community (Bailey and Werdell 2006). The difference in
spatial resolution of MODIST and Landsat may cause differences (Kutser
2004), even though we used the mean value at the same spatial scale
(750 m × 750 m).
Z. Cao et al.
Fig. 9. Long-term variations in Landsat-derived monthly mean Chla (a), cyanobacterial bloom frequency (CBF) (b), eutrophic intensity (c), and in situ monthly mean
TN and TP (d) in Lake Taihu from 1984 to 2019.
5.2. Uncertainty of Chla retrievals
The Rrc between TM, ETM+, and OLI indirectly evaluated by
MODIST matchups demonstrated fair consistency, suggesting that Chla
retrievals derived by them should be comparable (Fig. 4). However, we
did not calibrate their Rrc to the same level due to the difference in
spatial resolution and spectral setting and limited matchups. Sensitivity
analysis indicated that the difference of Rrc among results had a devia­
tion of ~15% of Chla retrievals, which was lower than the systematic
deviation of the BST model (Fig. 5a).
Landsat-derived Chla had consistent spatial and seasonal variations
compared to other studies. For example, Zhu (2008) stated that Chla in
Lake Taihu had a temporal decrease from 1997 to 1999, but Chla
increased since 1999. Qin et al. (2019) found that monthly observations
of in situ Chla from 2007 to 2017 in Lake Taihu increased. Shi et al.
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642
(2017) reported that MODIS-derived Chla in Lake Taihu had highest
values in summer and lowest in winter. However, Landsat-derived Chla
from Lake Taihu have several uncertainties. First, TM/ETM+/OLI do not
have optimal settings to observe turbid waters. For example, a band near
705 nm (as in MERIS, OLCI and MSI) would have allowed the devel­
opment of a better algorithm for Chla retrievals, as it has been shown
that the peak in this spectral region is a good indication of high biomass
in eutrophic waters (Gitelson 1992). For highly turbid cases in Lake
Taihu, the BST model may overestimate Chla due to the high contri­
butions of SPM to the NIR band (Dogliotti et al. 2015). With more bands,
machine learning should have improved accuracy in predicting Chla in
turbid waters (Pahlevan et al. 2020). Although XGBoost outperformed
the RF and SVR in retrieving Chla from Landsat measurements in Lake
Taihu, the XGBoost model underestimated high Chla (>60 µg L-1), which
was related to the unbalanced proportion of high Chla samples in the
Z. Cao et al.
Fig. 10. Monthly mean Chla in Lake Taihu from 1984 to 2019.
training dataset (Cao et al. 2020). Given that machine learning
approach, including the BST model in this study, is empirical and its
performance depended on the training dataset, the BST model devel­
oped for Lake Taihu might not retrieve reliable Chla in other waters.
Such limits might be fixed with more samples with balanced proportions
in the future. Nevertheless, the training dataset used in the BST model
covered a broad range of Chla (1.4–99.1 µg L-1), suggesting that the BST
model was able to apply in most cases of Lake Taihu. The current model
could not estimate Chla in waters covered by cyanobacterial scums
where there are significantly different optical characteristics from wa­
ters without scums (Hu et al. 2010). To remedy this limit, eutrophic
intensity was introduced to evaluate the eutrophic status.
The limited images of Landsat instruments had potential influences
on generating the Chla time series and subsequent analysis for the
annual variation in Chla in Lake Taihu. It is difficult to obtain sufficient
data with the Landsat satellite’s revisit time of 16 days, particularly in
cloudy areas such as Lake Taihu. Some satellite images used to calculate
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642
annual mean Chla may include some extreme lake conditions (e.g., high
turbidity or high biomass), resulting in deviations from the “actual”
water situation (Feng et al. 2021). To reduce the impact of uneven
distribution of images in each season on the interannual mean value, 3-
year period was used to generate temporal variations in Chla in Lake
Taihu from 1984 to 2019 (Fig. S3). The variation in Chla revealed by 3-
year intervals demonstrates similar variations with annual mean Chla
variability in Lake Taihu, suggesting that the overall variatioin in Chla in
Lake Taihu over past 36 years derived by Landsat instruments is
reasonable. In the future, the Sentinel-2A/B and Landsat-8/9 virtual
constellation is anticipated to more frequent monitoring of lake water
quality (Pahlevan et al. 2019).
5.3. Drivers of variability in trophic state
We found that the high Chla in the northern bays and western Taihu
(Fig. 7a) was consistent with the distribution of nutrients determined
Z. Cao et al.
Fig. 11. Annual seasonal mean Chla (a), TN (b), TP (c), and TN:TP mass ratio (d) in different regions of Lake Taihu from 1992 to 2015. The cyan dashed line is the
water crisis event in Wuxi city in May 2007, and the black solid line in panel (d) corresponds to a 16:1 TN:TP mass ratio.
from field samples (Fig. 7d). In Lake Taihu, dissolved nitrogen was the
main component (79%) of TN, while inorganic particulate phosphorus
was the main form (69%) of TP. A previous study demonstrated that
phytoplankton biomass significantly increased with the addition of
phosphorus in winter and spring, while nitrogen was the primary
limiting factor during the summer and fall bloom periods in Lake Taihu
(Xu et al. 2010). The annual mean Chla for entire Taihu had significantly
positive correlations with TN and TP in entire lake (TN: R2 = 0.12, p <
0.01; TP: R2 = 0.17, p < 0.01, Fig. S2). Furthermore, TP showed sig­
nificant positive correlation with Chla in each subregion, in particular in
the northern bays (R2 = 0.24, p < 0.01). Given that Lake Taihu with high
TN and TP likely met the requirements for phytoplankton growth
(Fig. 11), temperature and winds may affect the growth of phyto­
plankton in the central and southern regions (Kosten et al. 2012; Paerl
and Huisman 2008; Qin et al. 2019).
We found that the frequency of cyanobacterial scums has intensified
since 2007 with a rate of 0.23% per year, and Chla and EI also increased
(Fig. 7). Although the TN declined significantly from 2007 to 2015
(Fig. 11b), TP slightly increased (Fig. 11c), resulting in a significant
decrease in the TN:TP mass ratio (Fig. 11d). Since the highly publicized
drinking water crisis in Wuxi City in 2007, a variety of restoration
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642
measures have been implemented to remove nitrogen (Qin et al. 2019).
However, increased water consumption and wastewater discharge
resulted in an increase in the phosphorus (Qin et al. 2020). In a low N:P
environment, cyanobacteria can grow by fixing atmospheric nitrogen
(Paerl et al. 2014) and become the dominant species. As such, the
decrease in TN and lower TN:TP after 2007 led to an outbreak of cya­
nobacterial blooms (Qin et al. 2019).
From 1984 to 2019, the annual seasonal mean air temperature was
positively correlated with Chla (r = 0.67, p < 0.01) (Fig. 12a), cyano­
bacterial blooms (r = 0.49, p < 0.01) (Fig. 12b), and EI (r = 0.56, p <
0.01) (Fig. 12c). These correlations were the strongest in the northern
bays (r > 0.70, p < 0.01). Climatic variables and nutrients may have
significant interactions to facilitate Chla variations in eutrophic and
hypereutrophic lakes (Rigosi et al. 2014). Deng et al. (2019) also
demonstrated that temporal variations in the air temperature and wind
speeds were the main drivers of phytoplankton variability in winter and
early spring for Lake Taihu, while the increase in cyanobacteria in
summer and autumn was mainly related to phosphorus.
Z. Cao et al.
Fig. 12. Time series of annual seasonal mean Chla (a), cyanobacterial blooms frequency (CBF) (b), and eutrophic intensity (EI) (c) in different regions of Lake Taihu
from 1984 to 2019. Black solid line denoted the variations in air temperature.
6. Conclusion
This research used MODIS Terra to evaluate the consistency among
TM, ETM+ and OLI, and then developed a machine learning approach to
estimate Chla in Lake Taihu with significant improvements compared to
previous studies. Landsat TM, ETM+ and OLI had fairly consistent Rrc
with the MODIS Terra in Lake Taihu, suggesting a possibility to build a
long-term observation in lakes using the heritages Landsat instruments.
We discussed the advantages and limits of the algorithm and proposed
some suggestions for improving the performance of the algorithm by
adding more matchups in training machine learning model. Based on
this algorithm, a 36-year dataset of Chla in Lake Taihu was generated to
reveal the spatial–temporal patterns of Chla and the development of
eutrophication. We found that the total phosphorus and warming
climate were correlated with temporal variations in eutrophication and
cyanobacterial blooms in Lake Taihu, while the nutrients were corre­
lated with spatial patterns. Future research is anticipated to use the
Sentinel-2A/B and Landsat-8/9 virtual constellation to monitor lake
water quality.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Nima Pahlevan (NASA) for his
critical suggestions. Financial support was provided by the National
Natural Science of China (42101378, 42071341, 42101056, and
41971309), Provincial Natural Science of Jiangsu of China
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 106 (2022) 102642
(BK20210989 and BK20170117), and Estonian Research Council (grant
PRG302). Data used in this study were also supported by Lake-
Watershed Science Data Center, National Earth System Science Data
Center (http://lake.geodata.cn). The model and scripts used to retrieve
chlorophyll-a from Landsat data were available in the Github (https://
github.com/zgcao/bst_oli/tree/master/landsat_chla).
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102642.
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