• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.1-3
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• 2003

In this study, spectroradiometer data were coupled with fluorometer data to find out the best suited bands ratio to monitor the chlorophyll a concentration for inland water. Remote sensing reflectance measurements were used to evaluate the performance of several default ocean color chlorophyll algorithms for SeaWiFS data. This study shows that the chlorophyll a concentration from fluorometer and reflectance from spectroradiometer lies in exploiting the signal provided by the chlorophyll a red absorption peak near 670nm. Two-band ratio based on a ratio of reflectance 670 and 700nm provided a good correlation for a linear model, compare with blue-green two band ratio.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.201-218
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to investigate climatological variations from the sea surface temperature (SST), chlorophyll-a concentration (Chl-a), and phytoplankton size class (PSC), using NOAA AVHRR, SeaWiFS, and MODIS data in the South Sea of Korea (SSK) and East China Sea (ECS). 26-year monthly SST and 13-year monthly Chl-a and PSC data, separated by whole and nine-different areas, were used to understand seasonal and inter-annual variations. SST and Chl-a clearly showed seasonal variations: higher SST and Chl-a were observed during the summer and spring, and lower values occurred during the winter and summer. The annual and monthly SST over 26 years increased by $0.2{\sim}1.0^{\circ}C$. The annual and monthly Chl-a concentration over 13 years decreased by $0.2{\sim}1.1mg/m^3$. To determine more detailed spatial and temporal variations, we used the combined data with monthly SST, Chl-a, and PSC. Between 1998 and 2010, the inter-annual trend of Chl-a decreased, with decreasing micro- and nano-size plankton, and increasing pico-size plankton. In regional analysis, the west region of the study area was spatially and temporally correlated with the area dominated by decreasing micro-size plankton; while the east region was less sensitive to coastal and land effects, and was dominated by increasing pico-size plankton. This phenomenon is better related to one or more forcing factors: the increased stratification of ocean driven by changes occurring in spatial variations of the SST caused limited contributions of nutrients and changed marine ecosystems in the study area.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 1999.11a
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• pp.249-255
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• 1999

Water pollution is becoming a serious problem in the populous cities and coastal areas near industrial complex. Sometimes, phytoplankton is considered as the most important element in the coastal environment. Phytoplankton is easily estimated by measuring chlorophyll content in the laboratory. In this study, to build up estimating algorithm of the chlorophyll amount related to the monitoring of coastal environments in Kwangyang bay, the correlationship the respective in situ observed data with Landsat TM and SeaWiFS satellite Image was analyzed. It showed that Landsat TM band 3 image has the highest correlationship with observed data, and based upon this result the monitoring algorithm of chlorophyll in coastal area was extracted. This algorithm will be an important for extracting and controlling environment elements in coastal areas in the future. And it has a significant meaning that it has established a spatial data construction in which satellite image alone could monitor the coastal environment.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.166-173
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• 2004

By analyzing the sea surface temperature (SST), phytoplankton and NOAA/AVHRR satellite data of Gijang, located at the eastern coast of the korean peninsula during the period of 2001 to 2003, we have analyzed the daily variation in the upwelling cold water, phytoplankton, and chlorophyll a. The SST of Gijang coast appealed rapid change due to the temporal and spatial variation of the upwelling cold water. This in turn led to an increase in the number of phytoplanktons and other varieties of organisms inhabiting in the Gijang coastal region.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.57-60
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• 2007

Monthly mean data of ${\AA}ngstr{\ddot{o}}m$ exponent and Aerosol optical thickness (AOT) from Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) measurements over the East Asian waters were analyzed. Increasing trend of the satellite-derived ${\AA}ngstr{\ddot{o}}m$ exponent from 1998 to 2004 was found while AOT mean was observed stable during the same period. The trend of ${\AA}ngstr{\ddot{o}}m$ exponent is then interpreted as increase in fraction of small aerosol particles to give quantitative estimates on the variability of aerosols. The mean increase is evaluated to be $4{\sim}5%$ over the 7-year period in terms of the contribution of small particles to the total AOT, or sub-micron fraction (SMF). Possibilities of the observed trend arising from the sensor calibration or algorithm performance are carefully checked, which confirm our belief that this observed trend is rather a real fact than an artifact due to data processing. Another time series of SMF data (2000-2005) estimated from the fine-mode fraction (FMF) of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) supports this observation yet with different calibration system and retrieval algorithms.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.85-95
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• 2008

Temporal and spatial variabilities of chlorophyll a (Chl-a) in the northern East China Sea (ECS) are described, using both 8-day composite images of the SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor) and in-situ data investigated in August and September during 2000-2005. Ocean color imagery showed that Chl-a concentrations on the continental shelf within the 50 m depth in the ECS were above 10 times higher than those of the Kuroshio area throughout the year. Higher concentrations (above $5mg/m^3$) of yearly mean Chl-a were observed along the western part of the shelf near the coast of China. The standard deviation also showed the characteristics of the spatial variability near $122-124^{\circ}E$, where the western region of the East China Sea was grater than that of the eastern region. Particularly the significant concentration of Chl-a, up to $9mg/m^3$, was found at the western part of $125^{\circ}E$ in the in-situ data of 2002. The higher Chl-a concentrations of in-situ data were consistent with low salinity waters of below 30 psu. It means that there were the close relationship between the horizontal distribution of Chl-a and low salinity water.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.635-651
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• 2012

To produce a level-3 monthly composite image from daily level-2 Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) chlorophyll-a concentration data set in the East Sea, we applied four average methods such as the simple average method, the geometric mean method, the maximum likelihood average method, and the weighted averaging method. Prior to performing each averaging method, we classified all pixels into normal pixels and abnormal speckles with anomalously high chlorophyll-a concentrations to eliminate speckles from the following procedure for composite methods. As a result, all composite maps did not contain the erratic effect of speckles. The geometric mean method tended to underestimate chlorophyll-a concentration values all the time as compared with other methods. The weighted averaging method was quite similar to the simple average method, however, it had a tendency to be overestimated at high-value range of chlorophyll-a concentration. Maximum likelihood method was almost similar to the simple average method by demonstrating small variance and high correlation (r=0.9962) of the differences between the two. However, it still had the disadvantage that it was very sensitive in the presence of speckles within a bin. The geometric mean was most significantly deviated from the remaining methods regardless of the magnitude of chlorophyll-a concentration values. Its bias error tended to be large when the standard deviation within a bin increased with less uniformity. It was more biased when data uniformity became small. All the methods exhibited large errors as chlorophyll-a concentration values dominantly scatter in terms of time and space. This study emphasizes the importance of the speckle removal process and proper selection of average methods to reduce composite errors for diverse scientific applications of satellite-derived chlorophyll-a concentration data.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.35-42
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• 2002

The results of our observation in May 2000 indicated that the SeaWiFS algorithm (O'Reilley et al., 1998), which was adopted for OSMI data processing, overestimated the actual chlorophyll values. This was rather unexpected in that there were good reasons to expect that the bio-optical properties of East/Japan Sea belonged to Case 1 water and in such case, the OC2 algorithm would give unbiased estimates of actual chlorophyll a values. In November 2000, a cruise conducted bio-optical surveys in the same area. This time we added HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) method for measuring chlorophyll a concentration to the standard fluorometric method, which we hale been using during the past Fluorometric method with acidification is known to result in under/overestimation of chlorophyll values in many parts of the world oceans, while it is easier and cheaper than HPLC method. To our surprise, the comparison of HPLC chlorophyll and fluorometric chlorophyll values show that fluorometric values gave an underestimation up to 50%. This error was due to the presence of accessory pigments such as chlorophyll b. Considering this error, our precious result of May 2000(Yoo et al., 2000) might have to be reinterpreted. Calculation of reflectance at 490 and 555nm, however, indicated that this is not still enough to explain the discrepancies.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.95-100
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• 2006

Measurements of ocean color from space since 1970s provided vital information with reference to physical and biogeochemical properties of the oceanic waters. The utility of these data has been explored in order to map and monitor highly toxic/or harmful algal blooms (HABs) that affected most of coastal waters throughout the world due to accelerated eutrophication from human activities and certain oceanic processes. However, the global atmospheric correction and bio-optical algorithms developed for oceanic waters were found to yield false information about the HABs in coastal waters. The present study aimed to evaluate the potential use of red tide index (RI) method, which has been developed by Ahn and Shanmugam (2005), for mapping of HABs in Korean and neighboring waters. Here we employed the SSMM to remove the atmospheric effect in the SeaWiFS image data and the achieved indices by RI method were found more appropriate in correctly identifying potential areas of the encountered HABs in Korean South Sea (KSS) and Chinese coastal waters during 1999-2004. But the existence of high absorbing and scattering materials greatly interfered with the standard OC4 algorithm which falsely identified red tides in these waters. In comparison with other methods, the RI approach for the early detection of HABs can provide state managers with accurate identification of the extent and location of these blooms as a management tool.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.341-343
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• 2006

The current spectral shape matching method (SSMM), developed by Ahn and Shanmugam (2004), relies on the assumption that the path radiance resulting from scattered photons due to air molecules and aerosols and possibly direct-reflected light from the air-sea interface is spatially homogeneous over the sub-scene of interest, enabling the retrieval of water-leaving radiances ($L_w$) from the satellite ocean color image data. This assumption remains valid for the clear atmospheric conditions, but when the distribution of aerosol loadings varies dramatically the above postulation of spatial homogeneity will be violated. In this study, we present the second version of SSMM which will take into account the horizontal variations of aerosol loading in the correction of atmospheric effects in SeaWiFS ocean color image data. The new version includes models for the correction of the effects of aerosols and Raleigh particles and a method fur computation of diffuse transmittance ($t_{os}$) as similar to SeaWiFS. We tested this method over the different optical environments and compared its effectiveness with the results of standard atmospheric correction (SAC) algorithm (Gordon and Wang, 1994) and those from in-situ observations. Findings revealed that the SAC algorithm appeared to distort the spectral shape of water-leaving radiance spectra in suspended sediments (SS) and algal bloom dominated-areas and frequently yielded underestimated or often negative values in the lower green and blue part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Retrieval of water-leaving radiances in coastal waters with very high sediments, for instance = > 8g $m^{-3}$, was not possible with the SAC algorithm. As the current SAC algorithm does not include models for the Asian aerosols, the water-leaving radiances over the aerosol-dominated areas could not be retrieved from the image and large errors often resulted from an inappropriate extrapolation of the estimated aerosol radiance from two IR bands to visible spectrum. In contrast to the above results, the new SSMM enabled accurate retrieval of water-leaving radiances in a various range of turbid waters with SS concentrations from 1 to 100 g $m^{-3}$ that closely matched with those from the in-situ observations. Regardless of the spectral band, the RMS error deviation was minimum of 0.003 and maximum of 0.46, in contrast with those of 0.26 and 0.81, respectively, for SAC algorithm. The new SSMM also remove all aerosol effects excluding areas for which the signal-to-noise ratio is much lower than the water signal.