Macroalgae have attracted the interest of remote sensing as targets to study coastal marine ecosystems because of their key ecological role. The goal of this paper is to analyze a new spectral library, including 28 macroalgae from the South-West Atlantic coast, in order to assess its use in hyperspectral remote sensing. The library includes species collected in the Atlantic Patagonian coast (Argentina) with representatives of brown, red, and green algae, being 22 of the species included in a spectral library for the first time. The spectra of these main groups are described, and the intraspecific variability is also assessed, considering kelp differentiated tissues and depth range, discussing them from the point of view of their effects on spectral features. A classification and an independent component analysis using the spectral range and simulated bands of two state-of-the-art drone-borne hyperspectral sensors were performed. The results show spectral features and clusters identifying further algae taxonomic groups, showing the potential applications of this spectral library for drone-based mapping of this ecological and economical asset of our coastal marine ecosystems.
Coastal oceanographic processes, like up- and downwelling, topographic fronts, etc., have consequences in biological communities. In some cases, these processes show up as surface structures observable in satellite imagery at different scales. In this work, we focus on the persistent structures observed in the coastal marine protected area of Parque Interjurisdiccional Marino-Costero Patagonia Austral (PIMCPA), one of the most relevant areas of the Argentine coast in terms of biodiversity and productivity. Using 80 Landsat-8 30 m-resolution images from the years 2017–2021, more than 20 structures were identified in the PIMCPA that appear consistently across seasons in approximately the same areas. We focus on four of them, those that are persistent and of medium scale, whose dimensions do not extend in most cases more than 10 km from their region of generation, and describe their location and shape in detail, and analyze their dependence on forcing variables such as tides, wind, bathymetry, and seasonality. Tidal currents prove to be the most significant variable in the formation and evolution of the structures described, above wind or seasonal stratification, which play only a secondary role.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.