Monitoring coastal or inland waters, recognized as case II waters, using the existing Landsat technology is somewhat restricted because of its low Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) as well as its relatively poor radiometric resolution. As a primary task, we introduce a novel technique, which integrates the Landsat-7 data as a surrogate for LDCM with a 3D hydrodynamic model to monitor the dynamics of coastal waters near river discharges as well as in a small lake environment. The proposed approach leverages both the thermal and the reflective Landsat-7 imagery to calibrate the model and to retrieve the concentrations of optically active components of the water. To do so, the model is first calibrated by optimizing its thermal outputs with the surface temperature maps derived from the Landsat-7 data. The constituent retrieval is conducted in the second phase where multiple simulated concentration maps are provided to an in-water radiative transfer code (Hydrolight) to generate modeled surface reflectance maps. Prior to any remote sensing task, one has to ensure that a dataset comes from a well-calibrated imaging system. Although the calibration status of Landsat-7 has been regularly monitored over multiple desert sites, it was desired to evaluate its performance over dark waters relative to a well-calibrated instrument designed specifically for water studies. In the light of this, several Landsat- 7 images were cross-calibrated against the Terra-MODIS data over deep, dark waters whose optical properties remain relatively stable. This study is intended to lay the groundwork and provide a reference point for similar studies planned for the new Landsat. In an independent case study, the potential of the new Landsat sensor was examined using an EO-1 dataset and applying a spectral optimization approach over case II waters. The water constituent maps generated from the EO-1 imagery were compared against those derived from Landsat-7 to fully analyze the improvement levels pertaining to the new Landsat\u27s enhanced features in a water constituent retrieval framework
