2002 Annual

Monday, 14 January 2002: 11:45 AM
Integrating multiple sensors to study algal blooms in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico
Karen S. Friedman, NOAA/NESDIS, Camp Springs, MD; and W. G. Pichel, P. Clemente-Colon, and X. Li
Poster PDF (353.9 kB)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) is finishing the second year of a two-year demonstration of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) derived products named the Alaska SAR Demonstration (AKDEMO). This demonstration provides near real-time SAR data and derived products, including wind images and vectors, hard target locations, and other ancillary data, to the government community. We plan on developing a similar experimental multi-sensor GIS system for the Gulf of Mexico region. This system will use data from diverse sensors such as RADARSAT-1 SAR, GOES imagers, SeaWiFS, MODIS, AVHRR, scatterometers, as well as data from buoy measurements and weather models. It will eventually incorporate data from the multiple sensors onboard ENVISAT and NPOES. The Gulf of Mexico experiment (GoMEx) will provide monitoring tools for near real-time applications, although it will initially focus on research using archived data. A valuable use of this system is expected to be detecting and monitoring algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico. An example of an algal bloom along Western Florida will be presented using the multi-sensor approach afforded by this system.

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