Spectral dependency of optical backscattering by marine particles from satellite remote sensing of the global ocean

By Hubert Loisel, J. Nicolas, A. Sciandra, D. Stramski, Antoine Poteau. 2006

201 citations recorded by the source corpus.

[1] Knowledge of the relative proportion between small-sized and larger particles in the surface ocean is essential to understand the ocean ecology and biogeochemistry, including particle dynamics and carbon cycling. We show that this information may be assessed qualitatively from satellite observations of ocean color. Such capability is based on the estimation of spectral dependence, γ, of particulate backscattering coefficient, bbp, which is sensitive to particle size distribution. Our results obtained from satellite observations of the global ocean are supported by in situ measurements, and they demonstrate a general decrease of the spectral slope γ from oligotrophic to eutrophic regimes, although significant regional differences are observed in the relationship between γ and the chlorophyll a concentration, Chl. To first approximation, such a decrease in γ is expected to be accompanied by an increased role of larger particles. This is consistent with our field data that show relatively high concentrations of submicron particles in very clear oceanic waters. Different seasonal patterns are also observed depending on the oceanic regions. The seasonal amplitude of γ is generally higher than that of Chl and bbp in equatorial and tropical regions, and it is much lower at temperate latitudes. These spatio-temporal patterns are interpreted in terms of processes that modify the composition of particulate assemblages and physiology of phytoplankton in response to environmental forcing. The changes in γ are clearly related to variations in the mixed layer depth and photosynthetic available radiation.

Subfields: Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/30cfc8ec5c6acea4e6c6f7f0c91c566cbb0713b3

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In Oceanography

Citations in the corpus

A decade of satellite ocean color observations. (2009, background): “Loisel et al. (2006) examined the spectral slope of bbp(λ) as an indicator of the particle size distribution, i.e., greater slopes are associated with smaller particles.”
Measurements and characterization of particle size distributions in coastal waters (2010, background): “particle assemblages [Kitchen et al., 1982; Jonasz, 1983; Loisel et al., 2006].”
Generalized ocean color inversion model for retrieving marine inherent optical properties. (2013, background): “By estimating IOPs at each wavelength independently, spectral shape functions, such as Sbp, can be calculated dynamically and considered output products [60].”
Submesoscale physical‐biogeochemical coupling across the Ligurian current (northwestern Mediterranean) using a bio‐optical glider (2008, background): “2003), c has been proposed as an index characterizing the slope of the particle size distribution for particles lower than 10 mm (Loisel et al. 2006).”