Quantitative detection of water constituents in the Baltic Sea - Introduction of an operational processing

Kurzfassung

With the launch of Envisat with MERIS onboard at 1 March 2002 a regular observation of European waters in the optical spectral range stated possible. This part of spectrum allows a remote sensing of in water constituents from space due to the specific inherent properties of the water body. The absorption is relatively low compared to other spectral ranges, so the electromagnetic radiation can penetrate into the water and interact with phytoplankton, suspended matter etc via absorption and scattering. This is important for photosynthesis of algae cultures and therefore plays an important role in many climatological questions, for the investigation of the corbon cycle and others. The Baltic Sea is the largest brackish water basin in the world and has a large economical, cultural and tourist cal importance for the anrainer states. The regular monitoring of the bio-ecological state therefore is a actual task for the present. The specific optical properties of the Baltic Sea water must be accounted for in appropriate algorithms. But the development of specific algorithms is only one, scientific side the only problem to establish a regular observation of the region, one must also have the appropriate infrastructure, to handle the large data and information amount. This is the technical side of the problem, which plays an equal role in the entire problem of regular monitoring. The current presentation will treat both sides of the problem. Within the MAPP-project (MERIS Application and Regional Product Project) founded by the German Ministry of Education an Research, a number of specific Baltic Sea algorithms for MERIS were developed. The main goal of MAPP was the provision of value added products derived from MERIS full resolution data. This includes the regular determination of chlorophyll, sediment and gelbstoff concentrations mapped onto standard projection chart, up to the derivation of level-3 products, like weekly monthly and seasonal means in full resolution. For an effective reaction onto observed abnormalities or hazards a regular reception and processing of the data within one consistent chain is of high importance. This was realized within the Envisat-AO GEMEL3, Generation of Level-3 products for European Multidisciplinary regional applications. It includes the daily reception of MERIS-data in the DLR ground-station in Neustrelitz, the processing of standard products and the generation of the value added products with the MAPP-VA processor on a regular basis. In the presentation both the MAPP and GEMEL3 projects will be introduced and explained in their interaction. The capability of the concept will be demonstrated on a number of example products for the Baltic Sea obtained during the last years.