Case studies

Four case studies will be investigated in this project :

  1. Barents seas (Arctic ocean)
  2. Bay of Bengal (Indian ocean)
  3. Greater Caribbean region and Amazon plume (Atlantic ocean)
  4. global ocean

All of these areas :

  • are regions where international OA scientific effort is currently foccussed and where EO can provide a clear benefit to the international community
  • will involve an external collaborator who is particularly interested in the case study region and is able to provide additional data that the project can exploit (either in situ or model data)
  • will critically assess and exploit the algorithms and datasets developed
  • will enable the project to deliver the final results in the form of a scientific publication

Barents sea

It is increasingly recognised that the polar oceans (Arctic and Antarctic) are particularly sensitive to OA. These high latitude polar waters are very challenging regions for the collection of EO data.

Greater Caribbean tropical coral reef and the Amazon plume

At least two thirds of the reefs in this region are threatened from human impacts such as overfishing and coastal development.
They are also under threat by rising ocean temperatures and OA.

Bay of Bengal

This region is clearly a focus of current OA research with unique characteristics due to the large fresh water influence from the Ganges river (the second largest river in the world by discharge) and other large Indian subcontinent river systems (e.g. the Godavari river).

Global oceans

This case study will encompass all of the regions above and will use all available EO and in situ data with the maximum coverage that the available in situ data allow.