News

We are thrilled to announce that GEO AquaWatch, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Department, has been awarded a one year $86,000(USD) grant from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to initiate development of a water quality information system. The project titled “Development of a Global Water Quality Portal Using the SSEC RealEarth™ Framework” uses visualization technology to create an open, web-accessible visualization tool with capabilities including map displays of satellite-derived water quality information, in situ data sources, providing live graphs, and charts with daily updates and trends that draw attention to water quality issues. The website will also take advantage of RealEarth™ mobile device alert capabilities and social media sharing.

The new publication A Virtual Geostationary Ocean Color Sensor to Analyze the Coastal Optical Variability  authored by Dr. Marco Bracaglia and others at CNR ISMAR, might be of interest to the Water Quality Community deliberating Analysis Ready Data.  This work was carried out as part of Marco’s doctoral thesis, where he created an hyper-temporal analysis-ready Ocean Color (OC) dataset, named Virtual Geostationary Ocean Color Sensor (VGOCS). This dataset contains the observations acquired over the North Adriatic Sea by the currently functioning near-polar orbiting sensors, allowing approaching the geostationary sensor temporal resolution.  The VGOCS dataset is defined as an analysis-ready dataset as it is conceived to provide to users, without the expertise in pre-processing procedures, “ready to use” OC data to analyze the coastal optical variability at the high temporal resolution, similarly to the CEOS Analysis Ready Data for Land (CARD4L).

Now Available! The first version of merged satellite products for the ECV – Lakes

The ESA Lakes Climate Change Initiative (Lakes_cci) project team is happy to inform that the first version (1.0) of merged satellite products is accessible at:

https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/3c324bb4ee394d0d876fe2e1db217378

This dataset contains global lake products for the following five thematic Essential Climate Variables:
– Lake Water Level (LWL)
– Lake Water Extent (LWE)
– Lake Surface Water temperature (LSWT)
– Lake Ice Cover (LIC)
– Lake Water-Leaving Reflectance (LWLR)

Main Data characteristics:
– Spatial coverage: 250 lakes spread over the world
– Spatial resolution: Grid 1/120 degree
– Temporal resolution: Daily.
– 1 netCDF file per day containing all parameters
– Temporal coverage: From 1992 up to 2019 (shorter ranges for some parameters).

For more information please see http://cci.esa.int/lakes
E-mail contact lakes_cci@groupcls.com

Dear GEO AquaWatch Community,

On May 20th, 2020 we invited you to participate in a community discussion focused on the challenges and opportunities of EO-based Aquatic Analysis Ready Data (ARD) for water quality monitoring and assessment. We define ARD as the systematic radiometric, atmospherically, geometrically and spatially corrected full archive EO data sets of normalized water leaving radiance or reflectance. The objectives of this meeting were to explain the concept of ARD, show examples of aquatic ARD, unique challenges related to implementing ARD in aquatic systems, progress and products to date, and enlist members for an ad hoc Aquatic ARD committee. Here you’ll find an agenda and  Discussion Document.   You can view the video of the community discussion here.

Thank you!

Sent on behalf of GEOAquaWatch Leadership Arnold Dekker, Paul DiGiacomo, and Steve Greb.