TypSynSat

TypSynSat: Monitoring the Phytoplankton Functional Types by Synergistic Exploitation of Multi- and Hyperspectral Satellite Observations

The TypSynSat is a joint project of the <link en science climate-sciences physical-oceanography main-research-focus ocean-optics.html>Phytooptics Group at AWI with the Remote Sensing Technology Institute of the German Aerospace Center (IMF-DLR, Germany) and further collaboration with the Institute of Lake Research at the State Institute for the Environment Baden-Wüttemberg (ISF-LUBW, Germany), the Spectral Remote Sensing Laboratory of the University of Victoria (UVic, Canada) and MARE of the University of Lisbon (Mare-ULisbon, Portugal). The project is focusing on developing a system for monitoring key phytoplankton functional types (PFTs) in the following three test areas: The Lake Constance, Salish Sea and Portugal Coast. We investigate a possibility to develop this monitoring system and explore the system’s capacity based on hyperspectral information on water optical properties provided by the DLR Earth Sensing Imaging Spectrometer (DESIS) on board the International Space Station (ISS) and from the first German hyperspectral mission Environmental Mapping Analysis Program (EnMAP, to be launched in 2021). The monitoring system would benefit from the high spatial and spectral resolution of the DESIS information allowing to accurately distinguish between optical imprints of different phytoplankton types.

To extend the temporal resolution of the retrieved information on the observed PFTs, we plan to exploit DESIS data in a combination with information from multispectral sensors (Ocean and Land Colour Instrument, OLCI on board ESA Sentinel-3). A series of joint AWI/DLR/LUBW expeditions is planned in the Lake Constance on the basis of LUBW to support the research project by in situ measurements of water leaving reflectance, inherent optical properties and phytoplankton pigment compositions. The first TypSynSat Lake Constance took place on 16 – 19 March 2020. In situ observations from the Salish Sea and Portugal Coast will be provided by our collaborative partners from UVic and MARE-ULisbon.

Related research:

P. Gege (2014). WASI-2D: A software tool for regionally optimized analysis of imaging spectrometer data from deep and shallow waters. Computers & Geosciences, 62, 208–215.

Losa, S. N., Soppa, M. A., Dinter, T., Wolanin, A., Brewin, R. J. W., Bricaud, A., Oelker, J., Peeken, I., Gentili, B. Rozanov, V. V. and Bracher, A. (2017): Synergistic Exploitation of Hyper- and Multi-Spectral Precursor Sentinel Measurements to Determine Phytoplankton Functional Types (SynSenPFT), Frontiers in Marine Science, 4 (203), pp. 1-22 . doi: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00203.

DESIS true color image: Lake Constance 24 April 2019