A novel Satellite-based Ocean Monitoring System for Mexico

Abstract

To analyze patterns in marine productivity, harmful algal blooms, thermal stress in coral reefs, and oceanographic processes, optical and biophysical marine parameters, such as sea surface temperature, and ocean color products, such as chlorophyll-a concentration, diffuse attenuation coefficient, total suspended matter concentration, chlorophyll fluorescence line height, and remote sensing reflectance, are required. In this paper we present a novel automatic Satellite-based Ocean Monitoring System (SATMO) developed to provide, in near real-time, continuous spatial data sets of the above-mentioned variables for marine-coastal ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico, northeastern Pacific Ocean, and western Caribbean Sea, with 1 km spatial resolution. The products are obtained from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images received at the Direct Readout Ground Station (located at CONABIO) after each overpass of the Aqua and Terra satellites. In addition, at the end of each week and month the system provides composite images for several ocean products, as well as weekly and monthly anomaly composites for chlorophyll-a concentration and sea surface temperature. These anomaly data are reported for the first time for the study region and represent valuable information for analyzing time series of ocean color data for the study of coastal and marine ecosystems in Mexico, Central America, and the western Caribbean.

Strategic Actions to Value, Conserve, and Restore the Natural Capital of Megadiversity Countries: The Case of Mexico

“… 2013 ). The Satellite-Based Ocean Monitoring System in CONABIO provides information for the analysis of patterns in critical oceanographic processes, such as marine productivity, harmful algal blooms, and thermal stress in coral reefs (Cerdeira-Estrada and López-Saldaña 2011 ). Likewise, efforts are already in place to map the Mesoamerican reef benthic habitats with high-resolution satellite images, along with the the development of a monitoring network to measure coral temperature and bleaching, using a citizen-science platform (CONABIO 2014 ).…”

Criteria for Optimal Site Selection for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) Plants in Mexico

“…These data offer a new, automatic, near real-time operational processing system introduced for continuous monitoring of SST. The SST values of the SATMO are derived from two sources OSTIA and GHRSST-MUR by optimal multiscale interpolation and the data are filtered (based on surface wind speed data) to remove diurnal variability [38,39]. Daily mean SSTs were extracted from the SATMO time series from a polygon covering the coastline to 15 km from the EEZ, to reduce submarine cable costs and transmission losses.…”

Spatio-Temporal Assessment of "Chlorophyll a" in Banco Chinchorro using Remote Sensing

“…Chl a data gives near-surface concentration of Chl a in [mg/m 3 ], calculated using an empirical relationship derived from in situ measurements of Chl a and blue-to-green band ratios of in situ remote sensing reflectances (Rrs) [4]. Bands 9 (443 nm), 10 (488 nm) and 12 (551 nm) were used to calculate Chl a [6]. Each data has a pixel size of 4.6 km per side, therefore 108 pixels were needed to complete one scene of BCh.…”

“…Analysis with SATMO [6] datasets is the natural next step in this research, because SATMO offers a spatial resolution of one kilometer per pixel. Additionally applied Chl a algorithms in optical bands of other satellite missions as "Sentinel 2" or landsat is missing.…”