Sensors and Methods for Remote Sensing of Nearshore and Inland Waters

Kurzfassung

The October 2001 workshop on Remote Sensing and Resource Management in Nearshore and Inland Waters, held in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, included a session titled Sensors & Methods. It focused on existing capabilities of remote sensing instruments of various types. Satellite, airborne, and in situ sensors, as well as new ground-based approaches (spectral data bases and simulations) were addressed. The theme of this session was to acknowledge and affirm the fact that there currently exists a suite of remote sensing instruments that have proven to be useful for remote sensing of coastal and inland waters. Although these are promising for management and science applications (see C. Pennisi this issue), they are currently under-utilized (see R.P. Bukata et al., this issue). A wide variety of methods and techniques have been developed to apply remote sensing data to management and science issues pertinent to nearshore and inland aquatic ecosystems. Natural waters dominated by a myriad of scattering and absorptive matter introduced by adjacent or encapsulating land masses (case 2 waters) are considerably more optically-complex than natural waters dominated by chlorophyll-bearing biota and its co-varying detrital matter (case 1 waters). This disparity in optical complexity necessitates that many of these methods and techniques possess a degree of sophistication and complexity exceeding that which has served and continues to serve the requirements that case 1 waters impose. Currently, these novel approaches to inland and coastal remote sensing include new sensors and methods that have either been or are in the stages of being validated. The following is a summary of talks on sensors and methods presented at the workshop. The summary will equally emphasize presentations of in situ, airborne, satellite, and computer modeling results.