CI-CORE's Aerial Look Undersea :: Humboldt State University

CI-CORE's Aerial Look Undersea To look under the surface of the North Coast’s near-shore undersea realm, a research team will fly over the Humboldt Bay region next week with high-tech cameras yielding “hyperspectral imagery” of the submerged habitat. The research is part of a project examining the 1,200-mile California coast, from 100 meters deep in the water to 100 meters high on land, being conducted by the Center for Integrated Coastal Observation Research and Education – or CI-CORE, a collaboration of 11 institutions, including Humboldt State University. The Oct. 25-28 flights locally begin a three-week CI-CORE effort to collect data along the entire California coast by a team from Old Dominion University’s Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department. According to ODU Professor Richard Zimmerman, “This is an exciting opportunity to use cutting-edge technologies to understand a part of the ocean that is critical to managing coastal resources.” Frank Shaughnessy, the HSU biology professor coordinating the local portion of CI-CORE’s data harvest, said, “The potential for getting high-quality descriptions of eelgrass habitat within Humboldt Bay, and especially kelp habitat on the outer coast, would be a huge step forward for northern California, where marine habitat maps are rare or nonexistent.” According to Shaughnessy, CI-CORE data will help scientists better understand coastal ocean dynamics and, in turn, help others manage the commercial, recreational and environmental burdens placed on California’s coastal resources by agriculture, industry and urban development. Funded by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal Observation Technology System, the effort will integrate data from the coastal flights with other new and existing measurements, including those of water temperature, photosynthesis, turbidity, salinity, nutrients and plankton composition. Next week’s flights, Shaugnessy said, will also yield high-resolution maps of coastal and wetland regions derived from cameras using hyperspectral imagery (HSI), which distinctly records many bands of light at varying wavelengths simultaneously. HSI data has been gathered in flights over a wide variety of environs, including wildlands, agricultural fields, mineral deposits, oceans and, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the World Trade Center. Over the North Coast, it is expected to provide increased detail of shoreline contours, ocean-bottom topography and vegetation. Researchers liken the challenge of looking through the water from high altitude to looking into a dark closet from across a brightly lit room. To produce coastal data, the HSI measurements must be corrected for bright light scattered by the atmosphere and reflected from the sea surface. To make this adjustment, while the aircraft collects its data scientists aboard ships will gather comparative measurements of the light just below the sea surface and of color-inducing materials suspended in the water, such as algae and sediments. CI-CORE involves researchers from HSU and seven other California State University campuses, ODU, University of Connecticut and the Florida Environmental Research Institute. Together they are creating a long-term observatory of ocean conditions. The upcoming field campaign will include sites at Humboldt Bay, San Francisco Bay, Monterey Bay, Morro Bay, San Luis Bay, Santa Barbara, Palos Verdes, Newport Bay and San Diego. HSU key roles in CI-CORE are to compile historical and long-term datasets within its marine science programs, support monitoring programs, and work with San Francisco State University and San Jose State University to establish a pier-based data logging station in Humboldt Bay. The datasets will come from long-term investigations of beach and intertidal ecology; marine mammal surveys; and surveys of algae, invertebrates and fishes in Humboldt Bay. For details, see the CI-CORE web site at http://cicore.mlml.calstate.edu/ or http://cicore.humboldt.edu/. News sources: Frank Shaughnessy, HSU CI-CORE Coordinator Department of Biological Sciences Humboldt State University 707-826-4133, fjs3@humboldt.edu Toby Garfield, CI-CORE Coordinator Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies San Francisco State University 831-771-4470, garfield@sfsu.edu Media contact: Sean Kearns Public Affairs Humboldt State University, Arcata, Calif. 95521 (707) 826-5151/news@humboldt.edu
(Posted on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 03:17 PM)
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