2nd Student Workshop on Ecology and Optics of Coastal Zones
- EARSeL's Special Interest Group Education & Training
- Faculty of Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
- Institute of Physics, University of Oldenburg, Germany
- Museum of the World Ocean, Kaliningrad, Russia
- The Atlantic Branch of P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Kaliningrad, Russia
was held in the premises of the Museum of the World Ocean in Kaliningrad, Russia,
on 19-23 July 2016.
More than 60% of humans live within 60 km from the coastline. Therefore coastal zones, including inland waters and land-ocean interfaces, are important environmental and economic resources, and their investigation with boats or ships has always been a challenge. Today hydrographic data are often collected from space or using airborne sensors, which is particularly relevant in regions with complex coastal waters influenced by freshwater and characterised by long coastlines.
Modern optical instruments have reached a high precision in various marine and land surface applications: vegetation and phytoplankton diagnostics, quantification of suspended and dissolved matter in waters, composition of soils, and pollution analysis, to name but a few. Sunlight reflectance and thermal emission make it possible to investigate parameters such as phytoplankton and coloured dissolved organic matter in the ocean, land cover and vegetation, and temperature of the Earth surface with satellites. Airborne remote sensing using lasers provides a tool for detecting pollutants such as oil spills at sea and discharges on land.
The 2nd Student Workshop on Ecology and Optics of Coastal Zones was a 5-day education and training event and followed a first workshop organised in 2014 at the White Sea, Republic of Karelia.
Satellite images: Courtesy of ESA, NASA and Wikimedia Commons. Click on images to access the original websites.
