• Latest News
• Introduction
• Summary of Research
• Table 1: Proposed Test Sites
• Table2: Proposed standard water 18 waveband set
• On-line documentation

Latest News

CHRIS was successfully launched in late October 2001 and is scheduled to begin its full programme of scientific data acquisition in June 2002. Please go to the CHRIS-PROBA WWW site for further details on the mission.

CHRIS Coastal & Inland Water Group

The Coastal & Inland Water Group met for the first time at the July 2000 CHRIS/PROBA Planning Meeting and elected Dr Samantha Lavender as the chairperson. The group was small (around 10 investigators and Evert Attema) representing a combination of core, additional and reserve test-sites. The investigators presented their proposed research and a preliminary list of priority and additional sites was drawn up from those present (see Table 1).

AO’s 35 (Sonia Silvestri, University of Venice) and 39 (Vittorio Brando, University of Venice) will be working in the Venice Lagoon and studying the spatial/temporal patterns of Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) and mapping submerged vegetation. The Venice Lagoon test-site is not the same as the Venice core test-site, which was based on the Venice platform that is around 10-km offshore. A suggested solution was to move the core test-site so that it covered the lagoon, but also had the platform on the edge of the image. Figure 1 shows the original Venice Core site (red square); the original AO 35 Venice site (Yellow square); a proposal of a possible site (cyan square).   A0-35 also includes the installation of a CIMEL sun-photometer in the town centre, but this would probably not be classed as a marine aerosol test-site. [Updated]

AO’s 19 (Kevin Ruddick, MUMM and Hans Van der Woerd, Vrije Universiteit) and 39 (Jaak Monbaliu and Suhyb Salama, K.U.Leuven) will be working at the Ostende test-site and include the mapping of chlorophyll and SPM through in-water optical modelling. This will involve research cruises and so an earlier decision on the acquisition plan is needed.

AO 38 (Peter Gege, DLR) involves the mapping of water constituents in the pelagial and basic research in the litoral of Lake Constance. The areas of interest spanned the lake, so an image with additional scan lines was suggested (because of the relatively poor pointing accuracy).This suggestion will be analysed further as the use of additional scan lines may not be operationally possible. [Updated]

AO’s 20 and 21 (Samantha Lavender, University of Plymouth) covered the Rame Head and Cyprus Eddy test-sites. Rame Head will be of importance for both the water and aerosol communities and has already been identified as a core test-site. The Cyprus Eddy test-site is related to a funded Framework-V project, cruises aimed at inducing an artificial plankton bloom by adding nitrogen, and is the only clear water (Case I) test-site.

A0 32 (Jean-Paul Hout, ESRIN) involves the characterisation of straylight (in preparation for MERIS) and is not based around a particular test-site, but needs clear (Case I) water with i) broken cloud and (ii) a straight coastline at right angles to the flight direction.

AO 7 was not presented at the group meeting, but was suggested and included during the reporting session. It will be of interest as it is an inland water test-site with a similar fieldwork protocol to the other water test-sites.

The discussions then moved on to the standard water 18 waveband set and a list was drawn up from primarily the CIMEL sun-photometer and MERIS wavebands (see Table 2). AO-30 was also interested in having imagery with a continuous spectrum, i.e. 61 wavebands at a 50 metre spatial resolution, but it was not clear whether this would improve the in-water optics modelling.

The summary given below and Tables 1&2 was presented to the Planning Meeting and is the starting point for further discussions.

Document version 1.2: 27 September 2000

Dr Samantha Lavender

Summary of research

• CHRIS will provide high spatial resolution and multi-temporal ‘ocean colour’ imagery
• All the priority water site will have in-situ sampling (optical and bio-geochemical) during the CHRIS acquisition periods. There will also be:
  - sun photometer measurements
  - other forms of remote sensing (additional airborne/satellite systems)
• The priority test sites are well characterised and represent a range of Case II waters
• The group will work together to share knowledge/code and also use the sites as a group.

N.B. AO Proposal 32 is investigating the effects of straylight and could possibly use the test sites suggested above.

On-line documentation

• Experimenters handbook
• Presentations from the CHRIS-PROBA Planning Meeting
• Evert Attema - Planning Meeting Agenda
• Mike Barnsley - Land
• Mike Cutter - CHRIS
• Jeff Settle - Atmosphere
• Frederic Teston - PROBA
• CHRIS documents from Mike Cutter (SIRA)
• Wavelength calibration note