REMOTE SENSING FOR AQUATIC ENVIRONMENTS

Aquatic systems are critical for provisioning ecosystem services that have sustained human civilization as evidenced by the establishment of the earliest civilizations on banks of rivers or along a coast.  Apart from regulating climate, aquatic systems provide food and transportation services, fresh water lakes and reservoirs provide water for consumption and irrigation, and coastal systems offer recreational services.  But growing human population, especially along the coast, has endangered the quality of ecosystem services.  The primary finding of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was that 15 out 24 ecosystem services examined are being degraded or being used unsustainably (MEA 2005).  Monitoring the aquatic ecosystem and understanding how to distinguish between anthropogenic and natural variability is an essential aspect of sustainability science. This course will provide an introduction to the use of remote sensing techniques that can be used to study the aquatic environment. There are several space-based sensors that provide information relevant to sustainable management of aquatic resources.  Depending on the sensor, observations are made as frequently as every day and spatially covering the entire globe.  Understanding the spatial and temporal context around an issue can help discriminate between local and far field effects and time series of remote sensing data can be constructed to investigate causes and consequences of environmental events.  Thus knowledge of the basic science of remote sensing, understanding how to select the appropriate sensor to answer a question, where to find the data and how to analyze this data could be critical tools for anyone interested in oceanic, coastal, and freshwater resource management. The course will follow active learning techniques and will consist of a lecture to introduce concepts followed by a discussion and lab time for hands on activities to learn and use tools for analysis of remote sensing data.  After the introduction of the basic principles of remote sensing, a series of case studies will be used to explore concepts in sustainability such as water quality, nutrient loading and hypoxia, coral reefs.  Remote sensing tools that are used to investigate and address environmental questions such as the effects of shutting down a sewage treatment plant, mapping of suspended sediment concentrations will be demonstrated and used by the students.  Each case study will be briefly introduced at the end of the pre