Collaborative Research - Theme IV

Ocean and Coastal Waters - Collaborative Research

1. Collaboration with NOAA NESDIS JPSS (NOAA Lead Dr. Menghua Wang)
   The Long Island Coastal Observatory (LISCO) – which uniquely combines multi and hyperspectral radiometers with polarization discrimination capabilities was extensively used by NOAA, NASA, Navy, and the US and international community for the validation of VIIRS, MODIS and other satellites. CREST, through LISCO, is an important contributor to the JPSS VIIRS calibration/validation Ocean Color team headed by Dr. Wang. CREST participates in bi-weekly conference calls as well as other meetings at NESDIS. NOAA participants. 3 CREST PhD students participate in this work. 2 joint Journal papers and several proceedings have been published.
2. Collaboration with NOAA NESDIS JPSS and NOAA NOS (NOAA Lead; Dr. Rick Stumpf) and Dr, Vince Lovco, Mote Marine Laboratories, Sarasota Fl.
   Developed algorithms for retrievals of coastal water properties using neural networks and multi-band approaches-including effective new technique for Karrenia brevis harmful algal bloom retrievals from VIIRS in West Florida Shelf without requiring a fluorescence channel. 1 PhD and 1 undergraduate participated in this work. 1 Joural paper has been published on this collaboration, which started in September 2015.
   The example shown in the figure below, shows the efficacy of the Neural Network technique developed by CREST for Karrenia Brevis Harmful Algal Bloom retrievals in the West Florida Shelf that can be used with VIIRS. which does not have a fluorescence channel, as well as with MODISA, which does. The neural network technique thus not only extends retrieval possibilities to VIIRS, but improves them over the previous techniques for MODISA.