NASA´s Big Coral Picture: The Most Exhaustive Reef Technological Study of History
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| Image: Heron Island Australia. About Australia |
NASA is conducting the most exhaustive, integral and complete Coral Reef study in history. There are hundreds -perhaps thousands of reefs studies globally so what makes this one stand out from the rest? Coral Reefs scientific efforts tend to focus on different aspects of reefs but “the The Big Coral Picture” still eludes us. An integral evaluation of the health and status of Global Coral Reefs, how they operating, how they contribute and interact with global cycles and how they are being impacted is the key to better understanding and more informed decisions and actions.
NASA has already began to change the game field and level it for the benefit of science, understanding and community. Where will the NASA CORAL mission takes us? Destination, still to be revealed.
On September 23 NASA CORAL reported on the first days of action of the active Mission. Since the Mission started on September 13 NASA scientists are diving into the waters of the Australia's Great Barrier and scanning these reefs from the air with a specially equipped airplane.
“CORAL's three-year mission combines aerial surveys -using state-of-the-art airborne imaging spectrometer technology with in-water validation activities,” NASA explains in its own words. The Mission will acquire a more “global-style-vision” by taking these methods of investigation not only to the Great Barrier but across the Pacific Ocean Coral System. This will allow to observe more global issues and understand inter-coral-reef-relationships, cycles and patterns.
CORAL´s Team say that the study will provide critical data and new models for analyzing reef ecosystems from a new perspective. NASA is specially interested in; health of reefs, reef´s condition today, natural and biological elements of coral reefs and human produced alterations.
The CORAL Mission is part of NASA's Earth Expeditions Program. “Our views from space shows our Planet is changing, but to really understand the nitty-gritty of these changes and what they mean for our future scientists need a closer look,” NASA explains.
Over the years NASA has identified areas of the Planet which they describe as “regions of critical change”. These areas are located on land, sea and air and the NASA´s Earth Expedition Programs was specially designed to tour the world and conduct field in-situ research campaigns. The CORAL Mission is a main column of this urgent concept.
The CORAL mission has a very human element to it and scientists are leading the way. During the first days of September NASA Diver and Scientist Stacy Peltier and the Airborne Laboratory Team prepared for the first day of action in Heron Island -coral rich space off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
“It’s a warm and sunny morning...As Stacy Peltier places a Nikon D5500 camera into an underwater housing, several sharks swim nearby in the aquamarine waters of the island’s small harbor dredged out of the reef;” NASA reported on September 23 -the first CORAL day.
“I’ve never jumped in the water with tons of sharks before,” Stacy Peltier nervously laughs but never hesitates. Fortunately for her and her team, the sharks found around Heron Island aren’t particularly dangerous to humans.
Stacy Peltier and the Dive Team will conduct underwater research while the airborne team flies over the same area conducting airborne research. Later teams will reunite to analyze the day and plan the next day. Data of both teams will be integrated, verified and analyzed. That is how the CORAL Big Picture comes to life, day after day, slowly but constantly, across the Pacific Ocean.
The biggest challenge NASA´s teams face is the dimension of the study area. Further down the line, once all the data has been gathered NASA´s analysts and scientists will have to face another challenge, a vast sea of data. Data by itself is pretty worthless, temperature charts, photographs, airborne spectrometers of light and radiation, each part of this puzzle alone does not have much value but once NASA experts do their magic thing the data will come together and form “the Big Coral Picture”. This picture will be able to see beyond what human eyes see, will be able to listen beyond what human ears listen. Virtual yet real, multidimensional and complex, several revelations can be expected to emerge from this Big Picture. This type of analysis can take weeks, months even years.
"CORAL will offer the clearest, most extensive picture to date of the condition of a large portion of the World's Coral Reefs," CORAL main researcher Eric Hochberg of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences BIOS assures.
But why is a Big Picture needed?
"This new understanding of reef condition and function will allow scientists to better predict the future of this global ecosystem and provide policymakers with better information for decisions regarding resource management," Hochberg said.
Despite Coral reefs provide very valuable ecosystems, goods and services, protect shores from natural disasters and provide billions of dollars in income and way of life for millions of people they are still poorly understood. Coral Reefs have been here for millions of years but the truth is that no one really knows how reefs are changing and what can really happen if they vanish. The International Scientific Community agrees that global coral reefs are a vital part of the cycle of life of the planet as we know it.
Hochberg warned that coral reefs might not be able to survive to increased human stress impact.
The CORAL Team explained that they are already deep into the work of the 3 year mission and that they have “set up shop” in Australia for the two-month. The Great Barrier is an ambitious start line. It is largest known reef on the Planet and the largest World Reef Ecosystem.
Coral reefs are massive systems spanning thousands of miles with intrinsic ecological niches and connections. Environments where Coral reefs extend range from fringing to barriers, to mangroves, to atolls, oceanic and continental shelf locations. Technology and software comes to play into revealing its essence.
What will the software and technology used by NASA analyze? Coral Reefs produce alterations of; the atmosphere, ocean currents, weather, cycles of nutrients and changes of ocean temperature and UV radiation to name just some alterations. Together global reefs systems affect global weather and other cycles. This global interaction is still not fully explored nor studied nor understood.
Day in day out CORAL Scientists will be diving and taking on research flights to meet the schedule of this 3 Year Mission. It is just another day at the office for them...
NASA has already began to change the game field and level it for the benefit of science, understanding and community. Where will the NASA CORAL mission takes us? Destination, still to be revealed.
On September 23 NASA CORAL reported on the first days of action of the active Mission. Since the Mission started on September 13 NASA scientists are diving into the waters of the Australia's Great Barrier and scanning these reefs from the air with a specially equipped airplane.
“CORAL's three-year mission combines aerial surveys -using state-of-the-art airborne imaging spectrometer technology with in-water validation activities,” NASA explains in its own words. The Mission will acquire a more “global-style-vision” by taking these methods of investigation not only to the Great Barrier but across the Pacific Ocean Coral System. This will allow to observe more global issues and understand inter-coral-reef-relationships, cycles and patterns.
CORAL´s Team say that the study will provide critical data and new models for analyzing reef ecosystems from a new perspective. NASA is specially interested in; health of reefs, reef´s condition today, natural and biological elements of coral reefs and human produced alterations.
The CORAL Mission is part of NASA's Earth Expeditions Program. “Our views from space shows our Planet is changing, but to really understand the nitty-gritty of these changes and what they mean for our future scientists need a closer look,” NASA explains.
Over the years NASA has identified areas of the Planet which they describe as “regions of critical change”. These areas are located on land, sea and air and the NASA´s Earth Expedition Programs was specially designed to tour the world and conduct field in-situ research campaigns. The CORAL Mission is a main column of this urgent concept.
The CORAL mission has a very human element to it and scientists are leading the way. During the first days of September NASA Diver and Scientist Stacy Peltier and the Airborne Laboratory Team prepared for the first day of action in Heron Island -coral rich space off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
“It’s a warm and sunny morning...As Stacy Peltier places a Nikon D5500 camera into an underwater housing, several sharks swim nearby in the aquamarine waters of the island’s small harbor dredged out of the reef;” NASA reported on September 23 -the first CORAL day.
“I’ve never jumped in the water with tons of sharks before,” Stacy Peltier nervously laughs but never hesitates. Fortunately for her and her team, the sharks found around Heron Island aren’t particularly dangerous to humans.
Stacy Peltier and the Dive Team will conduct underwater research while the airborne team flies over the same area conducting airborne research. Later teams will reunite to analyze the day and plan the next day. Data of both teams will be integrated, verified and analyzed. That is how the CORAL Big Picture comes to life, day after day, slowly but constantly, across the Pacific Ocean.
The biggest challenge NASA´s teams face is the dimension of the study area. Further down the line, once all the data has been gathered NASA´s analysts and scientists will have to face another challenge, a vast sea of data. Data by itself is pretty worthless, temperature charts, photographs, airborne spectrometers of light and radiation, each part of this puzzle alone does not have much value but once NASA experts do their magic thing the data will come together and form “the Big Coral Picture”. This picture will be able to see beyond what human eyes see, will be able to listen beyond what human ears listen. Virtual yet real, multidimensional and complex, several revelations can be expected to emerge from this Big Picture. This type of analysis can take weeks, months even years.
"CORAL will offer the clearest, most extensive picture to date of the condition of a large portion of the World's Coral Reefs," CORAL main researcher Eric Hochberg of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences BIOS assures.
But why is a Big Picture needed?
"This new understanding of reef condition and function will allow scientists to better predict the future of this global ecosystem and provide policymakers with better information for decisions regarding resource management," Hochberg said.
Despite Coral reefs provide very valuable ecosystems, goods and services, protect shores from natural disasters and provide billions of dollars in income and way of life for millions of people they are still poorly understood. Coral Reefs have been here for millions of years but the truth is that no one really knows how reefs are changing and what can really happen if they vanish. The International Scientific Community agrees that global coral reefs are a vital part of the cycle of life of the planet as we know it.
Hochberg warned that coral reefs might not be able to survive to increased human stress impact.
The CORAL Team explained that they are already deep into the work of the 3 year mission and that they have “set up shop” in Australia for the two-month. The Great Barrier is an ambitious start line. It is largest known reef on the Planet and the largest World Reef Ecosystem.
Coral reefs are massive systems spanning thousands of miles with intrinsic ecological niches and connections. Environments where Coral reefs extend range from fringing to barriers, to mangroves, to atolls, oceanic and continental shelf locations. Technology and software comes to play into revealing its essence.
What will the software and technology used by NASA analyze? Coral Reefs produce alterations of; the atmosphere, ocean currents, weather, cycles of nutrients and changes of ocean temperature and UV radiation to name just some alterations. Together global reefs systems affect global weather and other cycles. This global interaction is still not fully explored nor studied nor understood.
Day in day out CORAL Scientists will be diving and taking on research flights to meet the schedule of this 3 Year Mission. It is just another day at the office for them...
“By 9 am., the boat is loaded with the Team’s research equipment and scuba gear. Peltier, co-skipper on today’s trip, slowly guides the Heron Island Research Station research vessel Chromis out of the harbor. As they head out, the ghostly, rusted wreck of the HMCS, Australia’s first official naval vessel, sits on its side on the reef crest at the entrance to the harbor.
On board with Peltier are teammates Yvonne Sawall, a postdoctoral scientist at BIOS; research technician Andrea Millan and team leader Steven Dollar, both of the University of Hawaii; and NASA CORAL project scientist Michelle Gierach, who’s come along to observe and assist from the boat. Peltier radios the research station to report that there are seven passengers on board and that they are expected back to harbor at 4 pm,” the Mission log reads.
“Research, Research, Research, this is Chromis,” Peltier radios out.
“The team takes up to 1,000 pictures per plot, a process that takes 15-20 minutes. On a typical day the team will do two to three locations, collecting measurements from three to four sites at each location. They start in the deepest water, then move up the slope of the reef toward shore. If the water becomes too shallow they snorkel instead of scuba. Later, back on land, a special software tool called Agisoft PhotoScan will stitch all the photographs together into a mosaic, which scientists can then use to characterize what the community structure of the coral reef is at the given spot,” NASA explains.
After several days of running the clock NASA´s Gulfstream IV aircraft finally got green light for the runway at Australia’s Cairns Airport. The flight had been delayed for days due to bad weather.
Hovering above a laptop computer in an office at the plane’s hangar, CORAL project system engineer and mission campaign manager Ernesto Diaz and NASA CORAL project scientist Michelle Gierach, both of JPL, reviewed an animated sequence of satellite cloud imagery. Other members of the team watched or listened in by phone. To the south, the images revealed pockets of clearing over some of CORAL’s target areas. But would the clearing hold for the several-hour duration of a flight?
“Reefs are mostly unknown territory. Search online for "coral reef images" and you'll get a million spectacular photos, but they all show just the small fraction of the World's Reef area that scuba divers have visited. The fraction that has been scientifically surveyed is even smaller. We simply don't have enough data to understand which impacts to reefs are the most damaging and how resilient reefs are likely to be,” NASA CORAL explains why they keep going and going.
The Team which is out to provide game-changing models that will be used to estimate current Global Reef´s Condition and forecast Reef Condition under scenarios of predicted Global Change is out there, working.
The seas today are calm...
2 months to go... next off to another location...somewhere in the Pacific Ocean...
After several days of running the clock NASA´s Gulfstream IV aircraft finally got green light for the runway at Australia’s Cairns Airport. The flight had been delayed for days due to bad weather.
Hovering above a laptop computer in an office at the plane’s hangar, CORAL project system engineer and mission campaign manager Ernesto Diaz and NASA CORAL project scientist Michelle Gierach, both of JPL, reviewed an animated sequence of satellite cloud imagery. Other members of the team watched or listened in by phone. To the south, the images revealed pockets of clearing over some of CORAL’s target areas. But would the clearing hold for the several-hour duration of a flight?
“Reefs are mostly unknown territory. Search online for "coral reef images" and you'll get a million spectacular photos, but they all show just the small fraction of the World's Reef area that scuba divers have visited. The fraction that has been scientifically surveyed is even smaller. We simply don't have enough data to understand which impacts to reefs are the most damaging and how resilient reefs are likely to be,” NASA CORAL explains why they keep going and going.
The Team which is out to provide game-changing models that will be used to estimate current Global Reef´s Condition and forecast Reef Condition under scenarios of predicted Global Change is out there, working.
The seas today are calm...
2 months to go... next off to another location...somewhere in the Pacific Ocean...
