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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Sols 4366–4367: One of Those Days on Mars (Sulfate-Bearing Unit to the West of Upper Gediz Vallis)
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Right Navigation Camera on Nov. 14, 2024 — sol 4363, or Martian day 4,363 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission – at 02:55:34 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, Nov. 15, 2024
The Monday plan and drive had executed successfully, so the team had high hopes for APXS and MAHLI data on several enticing targets in the rover’s workspace. Alas, it was not to be: The challenging terrain had resulted in an awkwardly perched wheel at the end of the drive, so we couldn’t risk deploying the arm from this position. Maybe next drive!
We did plan a busy weekend of non-arm science activities regardless. Due to a “soliday” the weekend has two sols instead of three, but we had enough power available to fit in more than three hours of observations. The two LIBS observations in the plan will measure the composition of the flat, reddish material in the workspace that is fractured in a polygonal pattern (“Bloody Canyon”) and a nearby rock coating in which the composition is suspected to change with depth (“Burnt Camp Creek”). One idea is that the reddish material could be the early stage version of the thicker dark coatings we’ve been seeing.
A large Mastcam mosaic (“Yosemite”) was planned to capture the very interesting view to the rover’s north. Nearby and below the rover is the layer of rocks in which the “Mineral King” site was drilled on the opposite side of the channel back in March. This is a stratum of sulfate-bearing rock that appears dark-toned from orbit and we’re interested to know how consistent its features are from one side of the channel to the other. Higher up, the Yosemite mosaic also captures some deformation features that may reveal past water activity, and some terrain associated with the Gediz Vallis ridge. So there’s a lot of science packed into one mosaic!
Two long-distance RMI mosaics were planned; one is to image back into the channel, where there may be evidence of a late-stage debris flow at the base of the ridge. The second looks “forward” from the rover’s perspective instead, into the wind-shaped yardang unit above us that will hopefully be explored close-up in the rover’s future. This yardang mosaic is intended to form one part of a stereo observation.
The modern environment on Mars will also be observed with dust devil surveys on both sols, line-of-sight and tau observations to measure atmospheric opacity (often increased by dust in the atmosphere), and zenith and suprahorizon movies with Navcam to look for clouds. There will also be standard passive observations of the rover’s environment by REMS and DAN.
We’ll continue driving westward and upward, rounding the Texoli butte to keep climbing through the sulfate-bearing unit. It’s not always easy driving but there’s a lot more science to do!
Written by Lucy Lim, Participating Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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Last Updated Nov 18, 2024 Related Terms
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Sols 4357–4358: Turning West
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of its middle and right-rear wheels, using its Left Navigation Camera (Navcam). The difference in elevation between these two wheels at this location caused the drive planned on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, to end early. Curiosity captured the image on Nov. 5, 2024, on sol 4355 — Martian day 4,355 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 23:35:56 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024
Sols 4357–4358: Turning West
If you’ve ever driven down a road that’s in need of repaving, you’ll know that it can be an uncomfortable experience. The same is true on Mars: even at our carefully slow driving speed, the rough, rocky terrain that we’ve found ourselves in since entering Gediz Vallis many months ago continues to present challenges for our intrepid rover.
Planning today began with the news that Curiosity only made it about halfway to its intended destination from Monday. The drive terminated early after the rover exceeded one of its “suspension limits.” This refers to our “rocker-bogie” suspension system, which allows the rover to drive over obstacles while minimizing the motion experienced by the rover body. In this case, our right middle wheel is down in a trough while the right rear wheel is perched on a rock, causing the angle of the “bogie” connecting the two wheels to exceed the maximum allowed value (Those maximums are set with a healthy amount of safety margin, so we’re not in any danger!). You can see the state of the bogie in the image above. On top of that, ending the drive early also meant that we didn’t have the images that we usually use to determine if the rover is stable enough to unstow the arm, so some creative work was necessary to determine whether or not we could. Unsurprisingly, the verdict was that we shouldn’t do so while in this awkward-looking position.
As always, the team was quick to pivot to a remote sensing plan. The focus today was on getting any last-minute remote observations of the Gediz Vallis channel. This was because we decided that, rather than continuing to drive north, we would be starting our western turn toward the exit out of Gediz Vallis.
The first sol of today’s plan contains a hefty two hours of science activities. These include LIBS observations of a bedrock target “North Dome” and a pair of ChemCam passive rasters of “Jewelry Lake” and “Merced River,” two smaller rocks near the rover, the latter of which appears to have been broken open as the rover drove over it. Mastcam will then take a documentation image of North Dome, as well as a mosaic of some more bedrock at “Earthquake Dome.” This first sol also includes a set of environmental science observations, including a lengthy 30-minute dust devil movie, just over 10 minutes of Navcam cloud movies, and some Navcam monitoring of dust and sand on the rover deck. We also sneak in a Navcam line-of-sight mosaic of the north crater rim, to measure the amount of dust in the air after our drive.
The second sol is a fairly typical post-drive sol, beginning with a standard ChemCam AEGIS activity to let the rover autonomously select a LIBS target. The rest of the science time this sol is dedicated to environmental monitoring, including a Mastcam tau observation to monitor dust, some more Navcam deck monitoring, another Navcam cloud movie, and a 360-degree Navcam dust devil survey. No arm activities means the second sol also includes a Navcam shunt prevention activity (SPENDI) to burn off some extra power while also looking for clouds and dust devils. As always, REMS, RAD, and DAN will continue their standard activities throughout this plan.
When I joined the mission back in 2020, I would occasionally look at Gediz Vallis on our HiRISE maps and imagine what the view would be like between those tall, steep channel walls. So it seems almost unbelievable that we will soon be leaving Gediz Vallis behind us as we continue our trek up Mount Sharp. It will probably still be a few more weeks before we can say that we’ve officially exited Gediz Vallis, but I don’t think anyone will be saying they were disappointed with what we accomplished during this long-anticipated phase of the mission.
Onwards and upwards!
Written by Conor Hayes, graduate student at York University
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Last Updated Nov 08, 2024 Related Terms
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Sols 4334-4335: Planning with Popsicles — A Clipper Celebration!
This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera aboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4329 — Martian day 4,329 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Oct. 10, 2024, at 05:35:08 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, Oct. 14, 2024
Today was an unusually exciting day during tactical planning on the Curiosity mission because it intersected with a momentous event in space exploration: the launch of Europa Clipper from Kennedy Space Center. Even though the launch window occurred right in the middle of our morning planning meetings, at 9:06 a.m. PDT to be specific, today’s Tactical Uplink Lead and Science Operations Working Group Chair agreed it would be OK for the entire tactical team to take a 15-minute pause to turn on NASA TV and watch the launch together. Down the hall the Perseverance rover tactical team had decided the same, and for a few moments, the two teams paused their planning and watched together in anticipation as the countdown ticked down to T-0. Many of my close friends and co-workers had worked for years — some for decades — to make this mission a reality, and it was amazing to watch the enormous rocket carrying the Clipper spacecraft leap off the pad knowing how hard it was to get to this point. I cannot wait for the mission’s discoveries once it reaches Jupiter’s watery moon Europa!
In true JPL tradition, we of course had to commemorate the event with some sweet frozen treats on-lab. Back when Curiosity landed, we had a full fridge of ice cream that was kept stocked for the first 90 sols of the mission. (Eating ice cream cones at 2 in the morning is a core memory of mine from those early days in our mission.) Today, in a clever nod to Europa’s icy surface, we celebrated with some even icier sweets: fruit and coffee popsicles to anyone on-lab. I chose coffee of course; the caffeine was great to help me get through a busy day of planning for Curiosity!
On Mars, things with our rover are going well. We completed our mega ~50-meter drive (about 164 feet) over the weekend, which took Curiosity further north along the western side of Gediz Vallis channel. Our plan today is a “touch and go,” which means we’ll do contact science with APXS and MAHLI on a block in front of us named “Dollar Lake,” some remote sensing, including ChemCam LIBS of a target named “Cape Horn” and a couple Mastcam mosaics, followed by a drive to the north. We’ll continue to follow the western side of Gediz Vallis channel as we descend slightly down Mount Sharp, until we reach a location where we are able to head west towards a more easily traversable valley, and then restart our ascent.
What a fun day of planning today. Congratulations to everyone involved helping Europa Clipper reach this incredible milestone, and go Clipper go!
Written by Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
At the end of 2022, 65 percent of the Western United States was in severe drought, the result of a two decades long mega drought in the Colorado River Basin that had captured headlines around the world.
However, it was flooding, not drought, that was making headlines when we began our research for this story about OpenET, a revolutionary new online platform geared towards helping farmers and water managers monitor and reduce water use in watersheds where supplies were not keeping up with demand.
The start of 2023 brought flooding to many counties in California, leaving 68 percent of the state with suddenly little to no drought. And caused Forrest Melton, the NASA Project Scientist for OpenET and Associate Program Manager for agriculture and water resources with the NASA Earth Action program, to pause our video interview after a tree fell down outside his Bay Area home on a rainy day in March, 2023.
Coming online again after calling the fire department, Melton didn’t seem all too optimistic that the wet conditions would last. “California tends to swing between the two extremes of drought and flood,” Melton said. He referenced the 2016/17 winter which had particularly high precipitation but was followed by dry conditions during the following years, before the relief brought by the heavy rains, and flooding, in early 2023.
According to NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System it will take more than one wet winter to replenish groundwater in many parts of the western United States. Groundwater levels across the California Central Valley and many parts of the Ogallala Aquifer continue to decline. The need for better water management remains essential, and yet the data necessary to support new approaches has not been broadly available.
Enter the OpenET project, a multi-disciplinary, collaborative effort to make satellite-based evapotranspiration (ET) data available to the public. Melton describes the project as providing invaluable and scientifically robust data at all scales, “that can be used to support day to day decision making and long range planning to try to solve some really long standing and important water management challenges in the West.”
What is Evapotranspiration?
Evapotranspiration is the combined process of evaporation and transpiration, both of which transfer water from the land surface to the atmosphere as water vapor. Evaporation transforms water from the surface of the ground or bodies of water into water vapor, while transpiration is water vapor that is evaporated from plant tissues and escapes through the stomata, the tiny pores in plant leaves and stems. It is a process that is happening all around us almost all the time, but because water vapor is invisible to the human eye, it is very hard to measure on the ground.
A conceptual diagram of near-surface hydrology.M. W. Toews
To understand the effect evapotranspiration has on a local water cycle, picture a large decorative fountain. Typically, these fountains recycle the same water over and over. As a fountain runs, water is pumped out of the fountain heads, falls back into the fountain’s basin, and then flows back through the pipe system before starting the process all over again. We can think of the water remaining within this fountain’s local water system as non-consumptive water use. Some water, however, will be lost from the fountain’s local water system by evaporating from the pool’s surface or mist from the fountain’s spray.
Imagine the fountain also has lily pads growing in its basin. The lily pads will use the fountain’s water to survive and grow, losing some of that water to transpiration. The total water lost is evapotranspiration, and is considered consumptive water use, because it cannot be reused by the fountain. Tracking evapotranspiration can tell you how much water is removed or “depleted” from a local water system, and how much water needs to be added back in to support plant growth and maintain a healthy balance between water supply and water use. If too much water leaves the fountain, it will stop running. If too much water is added, it will overflow.
These concepts can be applied more broadly to the hydrologic cycle as a whole, and evapotranspiration data can play an important part in designing and implementing sustainable water management practices to combat larger issues like drought, as well as both short and long-term reductions in water availability. Historically, ET data have been obtained from ground-based instruments and methods, such as weighing lysimeters, which weigh soil and plants to track the water volume lost by evaporation or transpiration. Another common method is called eddy covariance, which calculates the amount of water vapor transported away from the land surface by wind eddies as they move across the land surface. But both are expensive and difficult to install and maintain, and measurements are only representative of a small portion of an individual agricultural field. It is cost prohibitive to collect these measurements over larger areas.
What makes OpenET different?
The OpenET team saw the important niche left open by traditional evapotranspiration measurement methods and filled it. They built upon decades of research funded by NASA, USDA and USGS and developed a new platform that can take easily accessible and already available data from satellite programs, like Landsat, and combine it with weather data to calculate the ET for every quarter acre of land. Satellites can record information like the Earth’s surface temperature and how much of the incoming light from the sun is being reflected back out to space. OpenET is able to use physically-based mathematical models to combine the satellite and weather data and output accurate data on evapotranspiration rates and volumes.
This information is then made easily accessible through OpenET’s Data Explorer, a free web-based tool that allows anyone with an internet connection to access the data OpenET provides. Users begin by selecting an area of interest from a map of the western United States that provides data at the satellite resolution of a quarter-acre, and also broken down into known areas of interest and individual agricultural fields, each color coded with a heat map of evapotranspiration. Cooler colors indicate higher rates of evapotranspiration while warmer colors indicate lower rates. Users can zoom into specific areas on the map, and with just a click, a chart pops up showing the evapotranspiration trends for a given area, for the current year and the past five years.
The chart can show monthly ET trends, useful for understanding seasonal fluctuations, and also cumulative trends, useful for understanding year-to-year changes in evapotranspiration. “The OpenET team took a user-driven design approach from the beginning, and each element of the Data Explorer and the open data services is there because a water manager or farmer asked for it,” Melton explained. As we played around with the map, it became apparent how much work was put into developing this project. Scientists needed to improve models and assess the accuracy of data, programmers had to develop the user interface and data services, designers needed to make the interface intuitive enough to be impactful, agriculture and environmental groups needed to help validate the model’s accuracy, and users of all types needed to provide requirements and then test the product to make sure their needs were actually met.
The OpenET consortium includes NASA, USGS, USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Google Earth Engine, California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), Desert Research Institute (DRI), Habitat Seven, Chapman University, Cornell University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and close to a dozen other universities and experts across the U.S. NASA Ames Research Center and CSUMB have played key roles in the scientific and technical leadership of the effort from the outset, working closely with DRI, EDF and the recently formed non-profit OpenET, Inc. In addition, over 100 partners from the water management, agriculture and conservation community provided user requirements and assisted with the design and testing of the OpenET platform and tools.
“OpenET would not be possible without the contributions of each one of those partners,” Melton said. “Both on the implementation side and those who are translating the data from OpenET into solutions to long standing challenges.”
Map of farmlands showing ET data for 2024. The cooler colors represent higher levels of evapotranspiration (ET), while warmer colors indicate areas with less ET.OpenET
Models like those built into OpenET can be extremely useful tools for understanding patterns in ET and water use, but are only helpful if their accuracy is known. The OpenET science team recently completed the largest accuracy assessment to date for field-scale satellite-based ET data, comparing the satellite data to ground-based measurements at more than 150 sites across the U.S. Led by John Volk of the Desert Research Institute, the study was published in Nature Water earlier this year. A key finding was that across all sites, an ensemble value computed from six different ET models performed the best overall, leveraging the strengths of each individual satellite-driven model.
However, the study also found that some models performed best for particular crop types or regions, which is important information for water managers and farmers who need the most accurate data possible. Publishing the results as an open access study with all data and analysis made publicly available was also important to build trust in the data. While the study highlighted some limitations of the models and priorities for future research, the rigorous and reproducible accuracy assessment helps to build user confidence that they can use the data, while being aware of the expected accuracy for different applications of the data.
Bridging the Gap Between Farmers and Resource Managers
OpenET has already contributed to one significant win for farmers that affects how water use will be monitored and reported in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
This inland river delta covers 750,000 acres and is an important water resource in California, but one where accelerated demand combined with habitat loss and water quality issues has led to major concerns. In the Delta, large portions of the agricultural land are below sea level. Levees protect the fields and contain the river channels that supply water for irrigation. In 2023, the state began requiring farmers to maintain a water meter or measuring device on each diversion, where water is diverted from a river for irrigation. However, this measurement proved challenging and costly as there are thousands of diversions in the Delta, and the measuring equipment was inaccurate and difficult to maintain in this environment. In addition, water users also had to pay for meters at the locations where water that drained from the fields was pumped back over the levees and into the river channels.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is a major water resource in California.Matthew Trump
“Mostly, what the state was interested in was the consumptive use: how much (water) was actually removed from the supply in that region,” Melton said. “So, it’s the perfect place for using OpenET because evapotranspiration really is the majority of the consumptive use in the Delta, if not all of it.”
After the launch of OpenET, farmers in the Delta worked with the Delta Watermaster, the California State Water Resources Control Board, the OpenET team and the Delta Measurement Consortium to develop an alternative compliance plan that used OpenET data to help streamline the water use required reporting for this complex region. Once the alternative compliance plan was approved, Forrest Melton and Will Carrara of NASA worked with the state Water Resources Control Board, the Delta Watermaster and water management agencies, and Jordan Harding of HabitatSeven to implement this solution. The Delta Alternative Compliance Plan, also known as the Delta ACP, allows farmers to use OpenET data to estimate their water usage; enabling farmers to complete their use reports in a matter of minutes.
“It’s the first time that satellite-based evapotranspiration data has been automatically integrated with a state-managed water reporting system,” Melton said.
Last year, more than 70% of farmers in the Bay-Delta region chose to use OpenET and to report their water use through the Delta ACP website, and they expect this percentage to continue to increase over time.
“The best part is that it is saving farmers hundreds of hours on preparing and submitting reports, avoiding millions of dollars in costs for farmers to deploy and maintain meters, and giving the state consistent and reproducible data on water use that has been reviewed and approved by the water user,” Melton said.
According to Delta Watermaster, Jay Ziegler, this approach has a clear benefit in the unique water flow setting of the Delta. “In reality, OpenET – and the use of publicly accessible data measuring ET is the only way to really discern consumptive use of water in the Delta on a reliable basis,” Ziegler said. “Candidly, we don’t really have a viable “plan B” in the absence of applying Open ET for water use reporting.”
In reality, OpenET – and the use of publicly accessible data measuring ET is the only way to really discern consumptive use of water in the Delta on a reliable basis.
Jay ziegler
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watermaster
Water Beyond Borders
As water scarcity is increasingly becoming an urgent issue all around the world, it’s easy to imagine how many countries could benefit from OpenET data.
OpenET’s first international partnership is led by Anderson Ruhoff, a professor in Hydrology and Remote Sensing at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where his team developed an evapotranspiration model called geeSEBAL for Brazil’s Water Agency.
Ruhoff learned about OpenET while he was in the US on a visiting professorship in Nebraska. He was intrigued and reached out to Melton who encouraged him to attend an upcoming conference in Reno, Nevada, where OpenET would be featured. The conference was due to start in just a few days time.
“So I had to find a last minute ticket to Reno and I’m glad I bought it, because when I arrived there they invited me to join Open ET. It was quite a coincidence,” Ruhoff said, smiling as he remembered the spontaneous decision. “We adapted our model for the US and started to participate in their work.”
In March, 2024, Ruhoff and OpenET launched an extension of the tool, called OpenET Brazil, with financial support from the Agência Nacional de Águas e Saneamento Básico (ANA), the Brazilian national water agency. The tool, called OpenET Brazil, will have similar goals as OpenET in the U.S., and the data collected will help improve Open ET’s accuracy overall.
Melton feels this will be a “great test case” for both working with new environmental conditions (in Brazil there frequently is more cloud cover than in the US during key parts of the growing season) and also developing new collaborations.
“The partnership will help us figure out how we can work with international partners to make the ET data useful,” Melton said. “The key aspect of our approach to geographic expansion is that leading scientists in each country and region, like Dr. Ruhoff, will lead the implementation, accuracy assessment, and the development of applications and partnerships for their country.”
Brazil has one of the world’s largest sources of freshwater, the Amazon River, and yet it can still be affected by drought. This is partly due to the fact that deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest has an impact on the entire region’s water cycle. Trees draw water up from the soil and during photosynthesis they release vapor into the atmosphere. This water vapor will accumulate and form precipitation. Trees are “basically a huge water pump,” Ruhoff said, and the Amazon Rainforest is large enough that it helps to produce the rainy season. But when deforestation is allowed to happen over large areas, that mechanism is interrupted. As a result of this disruption, the dry season is predicted to intensify, becoming longer and dryer, which in turn can affect crop production in Brazil as well as the rainfall that is critical for sustaining water supplies in Brazil and other areas of South America.
“Water doesn’t see borders. It doesn’t follow our rules,” Ruhoff said. “Deforestation in one place can affect people thousands of kilometers away.”
Water doesn’t see borders. It doesn’t follow our rules. Deforestation in one place can affect people thousands of kilometers away.
Anderson Ruhoff
Professor of Hydrology and Remote Sensing, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Studying evapotranspiration can reveal the impacts of deforestation with even more clarity. And importantly, it’s also public information. “So not only the farmers and water managers but every citizen can check how much water is being used in their area, especially during drought. It’s democratic information in that way,” Ruhoff said. “I think it’s important to have this information openly available and to try and reach as many people as possible.”
Melton feels there’s the potential to expand the project, if more people like Ruhoff are there to lead the way.
“There’s huge potential, but there do need to be stakeholders that come to the table and say that this is something that they’re interested in,” Melton said. “Water is so important and at times so contentious that it’s really important the data is seen as trusted. When there is a local leader, that substantially increases the likelihood that it will be trusted, and most importantly, used to bring people together to develop solutions.”
The geeSEBAL application that Anderson Ruhoff’s team developed, which now informs the OpenET platform. Science Direct/Anderson Ruhoff
Even when you live in a water-scarce region like California it’s easy to take water for granted. What platforms like OpenET can do for us, however, is make water, even in its most diffuse form, more visible to everyone.
Written by Jane Berg and Rachel Sender, co-published with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute
To learn more about OpenET, visit https://etdata.org/
Program Contact:
Forrest Melton
NASA Ames Research Center
forrest.s.melton@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 14, 2024 Related Terms
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
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Leveraging High Resolution PlanetScope Imagery to Quantify oil slick Spatiotemporal Variability in the Santa Barbara Channel
Emory Gaddis, Colgate University
Located within the Santa Barbara Channel of California, Coal Oil Point is one of the world’s largest hydrocarbon seep fields. The area’s natural hydrocarbon seepage and oil production have sustained both scientific interest and commercial activity for decades. Historically, indigenous peoples in the region utilized the naturally occurring tar for waterproofing baskets, establishing early evidence of the natural presence of hydrocarbons long before modern oil extraction began. Gaseous hydrocarbons are released from the marine floor through the process of seeping, wherein a buildup of reservoir pressure relative to hydrostatic pressure causes bubbles, oily bubbles, and droplets to rise to the surface. This hydrocarbon seepage is a significant source of Methane CH4—a major greenhouse gas––emissions into the atmosphere. Current limitations of optical remote sensing of oil presence and absence in the ocean leverage geometrical as well as biogeochemical factors and include changes in observed sun glint, sea surface damping, and wind roughening due to changes in surface oil concentrations. We leverage high-resolution (3m) surface reflectance observations obtained from PlanetScope to construct a time series of oil slick surface area spanning 2017 to 2023 within the Coal Oil Point seep field. Our initial methods are based on manual annotations performed within ArcGIS-Pro. We assess potential relationships between wind speed and oil slick surface area to support a sensitivity analysis of our time series. Correcting for confounding outside factors (e.g., wind speed) that modify oil slick surface area improves determination of oil slick surface area and helps test for changes in natural seepage rates and whether anthropogenic activities, such as oil drilling, alter natural oil seepage. Future investigations into oil slick chemical properties and assessing how natural seepage impacts marine and atmospheric environments (e.g., surface oil releases methane into the atmosphere) can help to inform the science of optimizing oil extraction locations.
Rachel Emery
Investigating Airborne LiDAR Retrievals of an Emergent South African Macroalgae
Rachel Emery, The University of Oklahoma
Right now, the world is facing an unprecedented biodiversity crisis, with areas of high biodiversity at the greatest risk of species extinction. One of these biodiversity hotspots, the Western Cape Province of South Africa, features one of the world’s largest unique marine ecosystems due to the extensive growth of canopy forming kelps, such as Macrocystis and Ecklonia, which provide three-dimensional structure important for fostering biodiversity and productivity. Canopy-forming kelps face increasing threats by marine heatwaves and pollution related to climate change and local water quality perturbation. Though these ecosystems can be monitored using traditional field surveying methods, remote sensing via airborne and satellite observations support improved spatial coverage and resample rates, plus extensive historical continuity for tracking multidecadal scale changes. Passive remote sensing observations—such as those derived using observations from NASA’s Airborne Visible-Infrared Imaging Spectrometer – Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG) —provide high resolution, hyperspectral imagery of oceanic environments anticipated to help characterize community dynamics and quantify macroalga physiological change. Active remote sensing observations, e.g., Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), are less understood in terms of applications to marine ecosystems, but are anticipated to support novel observations of vertical structure not supported using passive aquatic remote sensing. Here we investigate the potential to observe an emergent canopy-forming macroalgae (i.e., Ecklonia, which can extend more than a decimeter above the ocean’s surface) using NASA’s Land, Vegetation, and Ice sensor (LVIS), which confers decimeter-scale vertical resolution. We validate LVIS observations using matchup observations from AVIRIS-NG imagery to test whether LiDAR remote sensing can improve monitoring of emergent kelps in key biodiversity regions such as the Western Cape.
Brayden Lipscomb
Vertical structure of the aquatic light field based on half a century of oceanographic records from the southern California Current
Brayden Lipscomb, West Virginia University
Understanding the optical properties of marine ecosystems is crucial for improving models related to oceanic productivity. Models relating satellite observations to oceanic productivity or subsurface (e.g., benthic) light availability often suffer from uncertainties in parameterizing vertical structure and deriving columnar parameters from surface observations. The most accurate models use in situ station data, minimizing assumptions such as atmospheric optical thickness or water column structure. For example, improved accuracy of satellite primary productivity models has previously been demonstrated by incorporating information on vertical structure obtained from gliders and floats. We analyze vertical profiles in photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) obtained during routine surveys of the southern California Current system by the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation (CalCOFI). We find that depths of 1% and 10% light availability show coherent log-linear relationships with attenuation measured near surface (i.e., within the first 10 m), despite vertical variability in water column constituent concentrations and instrumentation challenges related to sensitivity, self-shading, and ship adjacency. Our results suggest that subsurface optical properties can be more reliably parameterized from near-surface measurements than previously understood.
Dominic Bentley
Comparing SWOT and PACE Satellite Observations to Assess Modification of Phytoplankton Biomass and Assemblage by North Atlantic Ocean Eddies
Dominic Bentley, Pennsylvania State University
Upwelling is the shoaling of the nutricline, thermocline, and isopycnals due to advection by eddies of the surface ocean layer. This shoaling effect leads to an increase in the productivity of algal blooms in a given body of water. Mesoscale to deformation scale eddy circulation modulates productivity based on latitude, season, direction, and other physical factors. However, many processes governing the effects of eddies on the ocean microbial environment remain unknown due to limitations in observations linking eddy strength and direction with productivity and ocean biogeochemistry. Currently, satellites are the only ocean observing system that allows for broad spatial coverage with high resample rates, albeit with limitations due to cloud obstructions (including storms that may stimulate productivity) and to observations being limited to the near-surface. A persisting knowledge gap in oceanography stems from limitations in the spatial resolution of observations resolving submesoscale dynamics. The recent launch of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission in December of 2022 supports observations of upper-ocean circulation with increased resolution relative to legacy missions (e.g. TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, OSTM/Jason-2). Meanwhile, the launch of the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite in February of 2024 is anticipated to improve knowledge of ocean microbial ecosystem dynamics. We match up SWOT observations of sea surface height (SSH) anomalies—informative parameters of eddy vorticity—with PACE observations of surface phytoplankton biomass and community composition to relate the distribution of phytoplankton biomass and assemblage structure to oceanic eddies in the North Atlantic. We observe higher concentrations of Chlorophyll a (Chla) within SSH minima indicating the stimulation of phytoplankton productivity by cyclonic features associated with upwelling-driven nutrient inputs.
Abigail Heiser
Assessing EMIT observations of harmful algae in the Salton Sea
Abigail Heiser, University of Wisconsin- Madison
In 1905, flooding from the Colorado River gave rise to what would become California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea. Today, the majority of its inflow is sourced from agricultural runoff, which is rich in fertilizers and pollutants, leading to elevated lake nutrient levels that fuel harmful algal blooms (HAB) events. Increasingly frequent HAB events pose ecological, environmental, economic, and health risks to the region by degrading water quality and introducing environmental toxins. Using NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) imaging spectrometer we apply two hyperspectral aquatic remote sensing algorithms; cyanobacteria index (CI) and scattering line height (SLH). These algorithms detect and characterize spatiotemporal variability of cyanobacteria, a key HAB taxa. Originally designed to study atmospheric mineral dust, EMIT’s data products provide novel opportunities for detailed aquatic characterizations with both high spatial and high spectral resolution. Adding aquatic capabilities for EMIT would introduce a novel and cost-effective tool for monitoring and studying the drivers and timing of HAB onset, to improve our understanding of environmental dynamics.
Emma Iacono
Reassessing multidecadal trends in Water Clarity for the central and southern California Current System
Emma Iacono, North Carolina State University
Over the past several decades, the world has witnessed a steady rise in average global temperatures, a clear indication of the escalating effects of climate change. In 1990, Andrew Bakun hypothesized that unequal warming of sea and land surface temperatures would increase pressure gradients and lead to rising rates of alongshore upwelling within Eastern Boundary Currents, including the California Current System (CCS). An anticipated increase in upwelling-favorable winds would have profound implications for the productivity of the CCS, wherein upwelled waters supply nutrient injections that sustain and fuel coastal ocean phytoplankton stocks. Increasing upwelling, therefore, is anticipated to increase the turbidity of the upper ocean, corresponding with greater phytoplankton concentrations. Historical observations of turbidity are supported by observations obtained using a Secchi Disk, i.e., an opaque white instrument lowered into the water column. Observations of Secchi depth—or the depth at which light reflected from the Secchi Disk is no longer visible from the surface—provide a quantification of light penetration into the euphotic zone. The shoaling, or shallowing, of Secchi disk depths was previously reported for inshore, transition, and offshore waters of the central and southern CCS for historical observations spanning 1969 – 2007. Here, we reassess Secchi disk depths during the subsequent period spanning 2007 to 2021 and test for more recent changes in water clarity. Additionally, we evaluate the seasonality and spatial patterns of Secchi disk trends to test for potential changes to oceanic microbial ecology. Indications of long-term trends in some of the coastal domains assessed were found. Generally, our findings suggest a reversal of the trends previously reported. In particular, increases in water clarity likely associated with a recent marine heatwave (MHW) may be responsible for recent changes in Secchi disk depth observations, illustrating the importance of MHW events for modifying the CCS microbial ecosystem.
Click here watch the Atmospheric Aerosols Group presentations.
Click here watch the Terrestrial Ecology Group presentations.
Click here watch the Whole Air Sampling (WAS) Group presentations.
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