GC23K-1227
Seasonal and Inter-Annual Patterns of Phytoplankton Community Structure in Monterey Bay, CA Derived from AVIRIS Data During the 2013-2015 HyspIRI Airborne Campaign

Tuesday, 15 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Sherry L. Palacios1,2, David R Thompson3, Raphael Martin Kudela4, Kendra Negrey4, Liane S Guild1, Bo-Cai Gao5, Robert O Green3 and Juan Luis Torres-Perez1, (1)NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (2)Bay Area Environmental Research Institute Moffett Field, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (3)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (4)University of California Santa Cruz, Ocean Sciences, Santa Cruz, CA, United States, (5)Naval Research Lab DC, Remote Sensing, Washington, DC, United States
Abstract:
There is a need in the ocean color community to discriminate among phytoplankton groups within the bulk chlorophyll pool to understand ocean biodiversity, to track energy flow through ecosystems, and to identify and monitor for harmful algal blooms. Imaging spectrometer measurements enable use of sophisticated spectroscopic algorithms for applications such as differentiating among coral species, evaluating iron stress of phytoplankton, and discriminating phytoplankton taxa. These advanced algorithms rely on the fine scale, subtle spectral shape of the atmospherically corrected remote sensing reflectance (Rrs) spectrum of the ocean surface. As a consequence, these algorithms are sensitive to inaccuracies in the retrieved Rrs spectrum that may be related to the presence of nearby clouds, inadequate sensor calibration, low sensor signal-to-noise ratio, glint correction, and atmospheric correction. For the HyspIRI Airborne Campaign, flight planning considered optimal weather conditions to avoid flights with significant cloud/fog cover. Although best suited for terrestrial targets, the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) has enough signal for some coastal chlorophyll algorithms and meets sufficient calibration requirements for most channels. However, the coastal marine environment has special atmospheric correction needs due to error that may be introduced by aerosols and terrestrially sourced atmospheric dust and riverine sediment plumes. For this HyspIRI campaign, careful attention has been given to the correction of AVIRIS imagery of the Monterey Bay to optimize ocean Rrs retrievals for use in estimating chlorophyll (OC3 algorithm) and phytoplankton functional type (PHYDOTax algorithm) data products. This new correction method has been applied to several image collection dates during two oceanographic seasons – upwelling and the warm, stratified oceanic period for 2013 and 2014. These two periods are dominated by either diatom blooms (occasionally toxic) or red tides. Results presented include chlorophyll and phytoplankton community structure and in-water validation data for these dates during these two seasons.