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Ocean Colour Remote Sensing in the Laptev Sea

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Remote Sensing of the Asian Seas

Abstract

The Laptev and Eastern Siberian shelves are the world’s broadest shallow shelf systems. Large Siberian rivers and coastal erosion of up to meters per summer deliver large volumes of terrestrial matter into the Arctic shelf seas. In this chapter we investigate the applicability of Ocean Colour Remote Sensing during the ice-free summer season in the Siberian Laptev Sea region. We show that the early summer river peak discharge may be traced using remote sensing in years characterized by early sea-ice retreat. In the summer time after the peak discharge, the spreading of the main Lena River plume east and north-east of the Lena River Delta into the shelf system becomes hardly traceable using optical remote sensing methods. Measurements of suspended particulate matter (SPM ) and coloured dissolved organic matter (cDOM ) are of the same magnitude in the coastal waters of Buor Khaya Bay as in the Lena River . Match-up analyses of in situ chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) show that standard Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS ) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS ) satellite-derived Chl-a is not a valid remote sensing product for the coastal waters and the inner shelf region of the Laptev Sea . All MERIS and MODIS -derived Chl-a products are overestimated by at least a factor of ten, probably due to absorption by the extraordinarily high amount of non-algal particles and cDOM in these coastal and inner-shelf waters. Instead, Ocean Colour remote sensing provides information on wide-spread resuspension over shallows and lateral advection visible in satellite-derived turbidity. Satellite Sea Surface Temperature (SST ) data clearly show hydrodynamics and delineate the outflow of the Lena River for hundreds of kilometres out into the shelf seas.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the German Science Foundation (DFG 4575), the Helmholtz Climate Initiative REKLIM, and the Helmholtz Impulse Fond (HGF Young Investigators Group Phytooptics). RG is funded by a Ph.D. fellowship from CAPES–Brazil in collaboration with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and a visiting fellowship from the Helmholtz Graduate School for Polar and Marine Research (POLMAR–AWI). The Russian–German marine expeditions are supported and organized by AWI and GEOMAR (DE) and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI, RU). The expeditions are an integral part of joint Russian–German projects funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research and the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. The ESA ENVISAT project (MERIS -ID 5504) provided MERIS data. BEAM-VISAT and SNAP are open-source software initiated by ESA and developed by Brockmann Consult (DE). The C2R processor was developed as a joint effort between the HZG Research Centre, Institute for Coastal Research and Brockmann Consult under ESA contract.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam and Bremerhaven, Germany

    Birgit Heim, Bennet Juhls, Astrid Bracher, Rafael Gonçalves-Araujo, Sebastian Hellman, Alexandra Kraberg & Paul Overduin

  2. Institute for Space Sciences, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Bennet Juhls

  3. GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany

    Bennet Juhls

  4. Lena Tiksi Reserve, Tiksi, Russia

    Ekaterina Abramova

  5. Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Ekaterina Abramova & Feodor Martynov

  6. Helmholtz Centre Geesthacht HZG, Institute for Coastal Research, Geesthacht, Germany

    Roland Doerffer

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  1. Birgit Heim
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  2. Bennet Juhls
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  3. Ekaterina Abramova
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  4. Astrid Bracher
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  5. Roland Doerffer
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  6. Rafael Gonçalves-Araujo
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  7. Sebastian Hellman
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  8. Alexandra Kraberg
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  9. Feodor Martynov
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  10. Paul Overduin
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Correspondence to Birgit Heim .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy

    Vittorio Barale

  2. Institute of Oceanography, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Martin Gade

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Heim, B. et al. (2019). Ocean Colour Remote Sensing in the Laptev Sea. In: Barale, V., Gade, M. (eds) Remote Sensing of the Asian Seas. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94067-0_6

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