Ocean Colour: Retrieve your own Chlorophyll by satellite

Subjects:

Geography, Biology

Objectives:

Learn to work with data with a geographical component

Materials:

• Printed handout
  
  
• For WATeRS: An Internet browser, optionally Google Earth Google Earth installed
  
  
• BEAM software installed
  
  
• BEAM Demo Manual
  
  
• Data repository

Time needed:

• For WATeRS (and optionally Google Earth) 30 mins
  
  
• For BEAM 2 hours. This might however be most suitable for a demonstration before the class and subsequnet limited interaction by the pupils themselves because it requires pre installed software and data. This requires only 15 mins.

Procedure:

Try to Open WATeRS and play with the buttons on the screen. Try to match some of the examples of the handout. Note that WATeRS currently doesn't hold satellite information about chlorophyll concentrations. As an alternative we suggest Google Earth. Suggestions for Questions: Can the pupils navigate to the location of their school? Did you notice that Google Earth contains satellite data and other geographic data (lines and sympbols). They overlay and can be used together because they use coodinates in the same system.

BEAM requires quite a lot of interaction. We suggest you (the teacher) to prepare a demonstration followed by limited interaction by the pupils themselves BEAM can be used to study

• Ecosystems: Eutrophication indicator threshold
• Health: Extraction of CHL values at certain locations

Background

WATeRS is a web-mapping application, which allows interactively explore remote sensing products, and to seamlessly combine this with other geographical data. Click Help to understand this application and gives examples for navigation with the system.

BEAM is the MERIS and AATSR Toolbox, provided free of charge by the European Space Agency (ESA). The latest BEAM can be downloaded from www.brockmann-consult.de/BEAM. BEAM includes several tools to support working with MERIS, (A)ATSR and ASAR data. VISAT is BEAM's visualization, analysing and processing application. It comes with a clear and intuitive user interface allowing new users to get started quickly.