There is increasing interest and concern over the impacts of mercury (Hg) inputs to marine ecosystems. One of the challenges in assessing these effects is that the cycling and trophic transfer of Hg are strongly linked to other contaminants and disturbances. In addition to Hg, a major problem facing coastal waters is the impacts of elevated nutrient, particularly nitrogen (N), inputs. Increases...

Remote-sensing reflectance is easier to interpret for the open ocean than for coastal regions because the optical signals are highly coupled to the phytoplankton (e.g., chlorophyll) concentrations. For estuarine or coastal waters, variable terrigenous colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM), suspended sediments, and bottom reflectance, all factors that do not covary with the pigment concentrati...

The concentration of total mercury [Hg] in waters, sediments and biota (carp and crabs) as well as the concentration of methyl mercury [MeHg] in biota from upstream (surface water systems) and downstream (coastal and estuarine systems) areas within coastal watersheds along the Chinese Northern Bohai and Yellow Seas were investigated. In most waters tested, the [Hg] could have adverse effects on...

We discuss the problems with and the real possibilities of determining oil pollution in situ in coastal marine waters with fluorescence spectroscopy and of using artificial neural networks for data interpretation. In general, the fluorescence bands of oil and aquatic humic substance overlap. At oil concentrations in water from a few to tens of micrograms per liter, the intensity of oil fluoresc...

Measured spectral absorption coefficients were inverted to infer phytoplankton concentration in three size classes (picoplankton, nanoplankton, and microplankton), chlorophyll concentration [Chl], and both magnitude and spectral shape of absorption by colored detrital matter (CDM). Our algorithm allowed us to solve for the nonlinear factor of CDM absorption slope separately from the other linea...

The California Current System is an eastern boundary upwelling system (EBUS) with high biological production along the coast. Oligotrophic offshore waters create cross-shore gradients of biological and physical properties, which are affected by intense mesoscale eddy activity. The influence of eddies on ecosystem dynamics in EBUS is still in debate. To elucidate the mechanisms that influence th...

Remote sensing reflectance (Rrs) classification of coastal waters is a useful tool to monitor environmental processes and manage marine environmental resources. This study presents classification work for data sets that were collected in the Yellow Sea during six cruises (spring and autumn, 2003; summer and winter, 2006/2007; and spring and autumn, 2007). Specifically, we analyzed classificatio...

This paper describes a first application-oriented analysis of MERIS products for Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) and Chlorophyll-a (CHL) concentration in Belgian coastal waters. Regional algorithms designed for Belgian waters have been implemented and compared with the standard MERIS products, termed Total Suspended Matter and Algal2 respectively. The standard and regional SPM products seem ...

The propagation of downwelling irradiance at wavelength from surface to a depth (z) in the ocean is governed by the diffuse attenuation coefficient, ) ( d K . There are two standard methods for the derivation of ) ( d K in remote sensing, which both are based on empirical relationships involving the blue-to-green ratio of ocean color. Recently, a semianalytical method to derive ) ( d K from ref...

Two morphological forms of the bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, are recognised in Indo-Pacific waters; a coastal form referred to as T. cf. aduncus and an offshore form, T. truncatus. The two are distinguished primarily on the basis of ventral spotting, present in adult T. cf. aduncus and absent in T. truncatus. We compared the morphology of specimens obtained from parts of their range w...