Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 45:101–166, 2015 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1064-3389 print / 1547-6537 online DOI: 10.1080/10643389.2013.829981 Remote Sensing for Monitoring Surface Water Quality Status and Ecosystem State in Relation to the Nutrient Cycle: A 40-Year Perspective NI-BIN CHANG, SANAZ IMEN, and BENJAMIN VANNAH Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA Delineating accurate nutrient fluxes and distributions in multi- media environments requires the integration of vast amounts of information. Such nutrient flows may be related to atmospheric deposition, agricultural runoff, and urbanization effect on surface and groundwater systems. Two types of significant undertakings for nutrient management have been in place for sustainable devel- opment. While many environmental engineering technologies for nutrient removal have been developed to secure tap water sources and improve the drinking water quality, various watershed man- agement strategies for eutrophication control are moving to high- light the acute need for monitoring the dynamics and complexi- ties that arise from nutrient impacts on water quality status and ecosystem state, both spatially and temporally. These monitoring methods and data are associated with local point measurements, air-borne remote sensing, and space-borne satellite images of spa- tiotemporal nutrient distributions leading to the generation of ac- curate environmental patterns. Within this context, several key wa- ter quality constituents, including total nitrogen, total phospho- rus, chlorophyll-a concentration, colored dissolved organic matter (dissolved organic carbon or total organic carbon), harmful algal blooms (e.g., cyanobacterial toxins or microcystin concentrations), and descriptors of ecosystem states, such as total suspended sedi- ment (or turbidity), transparency (e.g., Secchi disk depth), and Address correspondence to Ni-Bin Chang, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Con- struction Engineering, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL 32816, USA. E-mail: nchang@mail.ucf.edu Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/best. 101