Phytoplankton
focus of satellite project among URI, NOAA, Woods Hole
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| URI oceanography graduate student Kyle Turner makes some final adjustments to a flow-through system that will continuously measure light absorption and scattering from phytoplankton and particulates in seawater as the ship makes its way along the Eastern Seaboard. These in-water measurements will help interpret satellite data for the region. (URI photo/Audrey Ciochetto) |
Led
by scientists with NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center and National
Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, the team hopes to
determine how microscopic algae, also known as phytoplankton, in the ocean
absorb and scatter light, and how the pigments or colors of the phytoplankton
can be better identified and measured by satellite sensors.
“The
goal is improving our ability to measure different sizes and types of
phytoplankton from satellite sensors,” said Kimberly Hyde, an oceanographer at
NOAA’s fisheries center in Narragansett and project leader.
“Phytoplankton are
the base of the marine food web. Understanding how phytoplankton communities
are changing is of critical importance to managing sustainable fisheries
and ocean health.”
The team from URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography will collect water and continuous optical data, and Woods Hole researchers will observe phytoplankton samples during six NOAA Fisheries Ecosystem Monitoring Survey cruises, known as EcoMon, over the next two years, with the project’s second cruise scheduled later this month.
“The
collection of continuous optical data and coincident phytoplankton composition
across the dynamic range found on the northeast shelf will be invaluable in
developing well-validated satellite estimates of phytoplankton size composition
and functional groups,” said Colleen Mouw, an assistant professor of biological
oceanography at GSO and co-principal investigator on the project.
“Ultimately,
through the development and tuning of algorithms specific to the Northeast
Shelf, we will create a time series of phytoplankton functional groups that
will be used as inputs for ecosystem models as the base of the marine food
web,” she said.
EcoMon
sample collection occurs six times a year over the Northeast U.S. continental
shelf from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to Cape Sable, Nova Scotia.
Two
EcoMon surveys are conducted jointly with the Northeast Fisheries Science
Center’s bottom trawl surveys in spring and autumn. The other four surveys in
winter, late spring, late summer and late autumn are dedicated to plankton and
hydrographic data collection.
“We
are measuring the optical properties of the ocean in order to determine how the
particles in the water absorb and scatter light,” Hyde said.
“These
optical measurements will be used in conjunction with measurements of phytoplankton
pigments and with images of the phytoplankton community to develop regional
algorithms to detect phytoplankton composition from satellite sensors. In
simple terms, we are measuring and monitoring ocean color, which is an
indicator of the health of the ecosystem.”
Researchers
from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center have been collecting plankton and
hydrographic data in waters off the Northeast U.S. coast six times a year since
the early 1970s. EcoMon is one of the longest continuous programs at the
center, which has also conducted the spring and autumn bottom trawl surveys
each year since the 1960s.
The
project is funded by the Joint Polar Satellite System Proving Ground and Risk
Reduction Program, established in 2012 by NOAA and NASA to develop new
applications for data from the nation’s new generation of polar-orbiting
environmental satellites, and to improve the quality of the data collected.