Transparency is an important indicator of water quality and the underwater light environment and is widely measured in water quality monitoring. Decreasing transparency occurs throughout the world and has become the primary water quality issue for many freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems due to eutrophication and other human activities. Lake Hongze is the fourth largest freshwater lake in China, providing water for surrounding cities and farms but experiencing significant water quality changes. However, there are very few studies about Lake Hongze’s transparency due to the lack of long-term monitoring data for the lake. To understand long-term trends, possible causes and potential significance of the transparency in Lake Hongze, an empirical model for estimating transparency (using Secchi disk depth: SDD) based on the moderate resolution image spectroradiometer (MODIS) 645-nm data was validated using an in situ dataset. Model mean absolute percentage and root mean square errors for the validation dataset were 27.7% and RMSE = 0.082 m, respectively, which indicates that the model performs well for SDD estimation in Lake Hongze without any adjustment of model parameters. Subsequently, 1785 cloud-free images were selected for use by the validated model to estimate SDDs of Lake Hongze in 2003–2017. The long-term change of SDD of Lake Hongze showed a decreasing trend from 2007 to 2017, with an average of 0.49 m, ranging from 0.57 m in 2007 to 0.42 m in 2016 (a decrease of 26.3%), which indicates that Lake Hongze experienced increased turbidity in the past 11 years. The loss of aquatic vegetation in the northern bays may be mainly affected by decreases of SDD. Increasing total suspended matter (TSM) concentration resulting from sand mining activities may be responsible for the decreasing trend of SDD.
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