I. Introduction
BOTH inherent and apparent optical properties (IOPs and AOPs) in aquatic environments are affected by variable concentrations and compositions of particulate materials (e.g., [2], [23], [25], [27], and [30]), which in turn determine the design of remote sensing inversion algorithms. One such example is the maximum chlorophyll index (MCI) algorithm, which was designed for the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) to estimate chlorophyll-a concentrations (Chla, in ) in highly productive waters [11].