Evaluation of a New Airborne Microwave Remote Sensing Radiometer by Measuring the Salinity Gradients Across the Shelf of the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon

Abstract

Abstract-Over the last ten years, some operational airborne remote sensing systems have become available for mapping surface salinity over large areas in near real time. A new dualpolarized Polarimetric L-band Multibeam Radiometer (PLMR) has been developed to improve accuracy and precision when compared with previous instrument generations. This paper reports on the first field evaluation of the performance of the PLMR by measuring salinity gradients in the central Great Barrier Reef. Before calibration, the raw salinity values of the PLMR and conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) differed by 3-6 psu. The calibration, which uses in situ salinity data to remove long-term drifts in the PLMR as well as environmental effects such as surface roughness and radiation from the sky and atmosphere, was carried out by equating the means of the PLMR and CTD salinity data over a subsection of the transect, after which 85% of the salinity values between the PLMR and CTD are within 0.1 psu along the complete transect. From offshore to inshore across the shelf, the PLMR shows an average cross-shelf salinity increase of about 0.4 psu and a decrease of 2 psu over the inshore 20 km at −19• S (around Townsville) and −18 • S (around Lucinda), respectively. The average cross-shelf salinity increase was 0.3 psu for the offshore 100 km over all transects. These results are consistent with the in situ CTD results. This survey shows that PLMR provided an effective method of rapidly measuring the surface salinity in near real time when a calibration could be made.Index Terms-Great Barrier Reef (GBR), microwave radiometer, remote sensing, sea surface salinity. Y. Wang is with the College of Marine Geoscience, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China, and also with the Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Qld. 4811, Australia (e-mail: yonghong.wang@jcu.edu.au; yonghongw@ouc.edu.cn).M. L. Heron and P. V. Ridd are with the AIMS@JCU and Marine Geo-

Remote sensing of environmental indicators of potential fish aggregation: An overview

“…Airborne microwave radiometers have been used to determine the structure and influence of river plumes, since the input of freshwater plumes from rivers is a critical consideration in the study and management of coral and seagrass ecosystems (Burrage et al 2003;Burrage et al 2008;Wang, Heron, Hacker 2007). Low salinity water can transport natural and man-made river-borne contaminants into the sea, and can directly stress marine ecosystems that are adapted to higher salinity level.…”