ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Remote Sens.
Sec. Multi- and Hyper-Spectral Imaging
Coloured dissolved organic matter in a coastal Arctic environment and the implications for dissolved organic carbon monitoring from Sentinel-2 MSI
Provisionally accepted
Ximena Aguilar Vega1,2*
Dalin Jiang2
Agneta Fransson3,4
Melissa Chierici5
Jose Luis Iriarte6
Arne Kristoffersen7
Carlos Cárdenas8
Evangelos Spyrakos2- 1University of Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom
- 2University of Stirling Division of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Stirling, United Kingdom
- 3Norsk Polarinstitutt, Tromsø, Norway
- 4FRAM Nordomradesenter for klima og miljoforskning, Tromsø, Norway
- 5Havforskningsinstituttet Avdeling Tromso, Tromsø, Norway
- 6Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile
- 7Universitetet i Bergen Institutt for fysikk og teknologi, Bergen, Norway
- 8Universidad de Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Chile
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This study presents a rare, high-quality dataset of bio-geo-optical properties from an Arctic glacio-marine fjord (Kongsfjorden, Svalbard), collected during the critical spring melt and sea-ice transition period (April 2023). To our knowledge, this is the first study to utilise Sentinel-2 MSI to retrieve coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM) and DOC in such an optically complex, high-latitude nearshore ecosystem during this season. Our findings directly address persistent challenges in Arctic remote sensing (RS). We first characterised the system's bio-geo-optical properties, identifying CDOM as the primary light-absorbing constituent. We then demonstrated that existing atmospheric correction models (ACOLITE, C2RCC, POLYMER) perform poorly over this area, showing large errors. To overcome this, we established a regionally tuned empirical algorithm using Sentinel-2 MSI Rrs bands (490, 560, 665, and 704 nm) that provides accurate estimations of CDOM absorption (aCDOM(443)) from both in-situ and MSI data. Furthermore, we established new relationships between CDOM and DOC using our in-situ data. Applying these to MSI imagery revealed spatio-temporal dynamics: higher DOC concentrations characterised the outer fjord in spring, contrasting with higher concentrations observed at the inner-fjord glacial terminus in summer. This contribution provides a validated methodology and crucial recommendations for the RS of carbon in optically complex Arctic nearshore environments.
Keywords: Coloured dissolved organic matter, dissolved organic carbon, bio-optics, Sentinel-2 MSI, Svalbard, Kongsfjorden
Received: 11 Sep 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Aguilar Vega, Jiang, Fransson, Chierici, Iriarte, Kristoffersen, Cárdenas and Spyrakos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ximena Aguilar Vega, x.a.aguilar.vega@stir.ac.uk
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