Productivity and plankton blooms observed with Seawifs and in-situ sensors

Seawifs imagery received from the satellite at IOS shows patterns of coastal productivity and bright plankton blooms on the west coast of Canada, providing important input to fisheries management and marine ecosystem studies. Seawifs data are being processed using the NASA Seadas software to give geometrically corrected images of chlorophyll concentration and backscattered radiance, and are starting to show a wide variety of features along the coast and In the NE Pacific. However, coastal data suffers from errors which give negative water-leaving radiances, and hence overestimated chlorophyll concentrations. In-situ sensors are being installed on near-shore meteorological buoys to provide optical, biological and physical data, which can help correct these problems. The buoys also give time series to interpolate information through cloudy periods, and provide the calibration and validation information needed to make use of the now information being provided by MODIS, and soon to be provided by MERIS.