ROSES Proposals

Optically shallow waters (OSW) house many of the most critical marine environments, including coral reefs, seagrass meadows, and algae beds. These habitats provide benefits such as shoreline stabilization, fishery nurseries, and ecotourism, but are notoriously difficult to monitor using multispectral ocean color data due to difficulties in separating the atmospheric, water column, and benthic signals integrated within the measured total reflectance. The PACE-OCI dataset, however, provides an unprecedented opportunity to assess these environments at global scale. Toward that end, this research group has developed an OCI-specific approach to derive water quality data, depth, and benthic reflectance in OSW environments. In this project, we will optimize this approach into a spatiotemporally integrative implementation, and thereby minimize uncertainties in the derived products, maximize computational efficiency, and allow for seamless transitions between OSW and adjacent deep waters. Specific tasks of the proposed work include developing global bathymetric and benthic albedo maps at OCI-scale, incorporating spectral absorption characterizations from offshore waters to adjacent OSW targets, retrieving water quality and benthic change parameters in OSW environments, and assessing uncertainties using statistical measures and in situ data. Notably, the outcomes of these efforts will also directly improve similar OSW algorithms already developed for heritage multispectral sensors. Our products with further be into new and existing global applications and data distribution systems, whereby we will provide stakeholder-relevant derived products to inform management of these critical nearshore environments.

Postdocs: Yuyuan Xie and Cheng Xue, University of South Florida
Project Collaborator: Derek Manzello, NOAA CRW