Overview

Water quality monitoring in coastal ocean estuaries and inland lakes is critical for ecosystems and fisheries management and safe drinking water. Remote sensing of water quality parameters has conventionally used data from multispectral sensors (e.g., Aqua-MODIS, Landsat-OLI, Sentinel-3 OLCI, Sentinel-2 MSI) with a limited number of spectral bands. There have been research missions with hyperspectral sensors (e.g., EO-Hyperion, HICO) that have demonstrated that hyperspectral data (bandwidth <10 nm) can capture more detailed information about water surface reflectance and enable the detection of a wide variety of water pollutants. Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean, Ecosystem (PACE), a new NASA mission, was launched on 8 February 2024. PACE – Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) collects global, hyperspectral observations for water quality monitoring.

This three-part introductory training will provide an overview of past and current hyperspectral sensors. Specifically, the training will provide information on NASA’s PACE mission, its sensors and data products, webtools to access data, and software for processing hyperspectral data and water quality parameters derived from PACE/OCI. The training will also highlight some advantages and limitations of PACE data. This will be the first ARSET training focusing on the use of hyperspectral data for water quality applications.

This training is also available in Spanish.

Objective

By the end of this training attendees will be able to:

1. Review the capabilities of past and current hyperspectral missions useful for water quality applications.
2. Examine key characteristics of the new NASA PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean, Ecosystem) hyperspectral mission satellite and instruments including their advantages and limitations.
3. Access, analyze, and visualize PACE level 2 and 3 data for water quality monitoring in selected areas of interest through using SeaDAS and Jupyter Notebook software.
4. Assess the applicability of selected PACE level 2 and 3 water quality parameters to evaluate water quality in large bodies of water.

Level and Format

• Introductory
• Three, 1.5-hour parts

Audience

Local, State, and Federal Water Quality Managers, Fisheries Advisors, Aquaculture Managers, Freshwater and Coastal Ecosystems Managers, and Academic Researchers Working On Remote Sensing of Water Quality and Biogeochemistry.