Hydrological optics has a rich history, playing a significant role in physical, chemical, and biological oceanography. The success over the last 30 years has provided oceanographers with a non-invasive means to study regional and global scale physical, chemical, and biological processes (Figure 1). The ability to map the color of...
The physical, biological, chemical, and optical
processes of the ocean operate on a wide
variety of spatial and temporal scales, from
seconds to decades and from micrometers to
thousands of kilometers (Dickey et al., this
issue; Dickey, 1991). These processes drive
the accumulation and loss of living and nonliving
mass...
In optically shallow waters, i.e., when the bottom is visible through the water,
a tantalizing variety and level of detail about bottom characteristics are
apparent in aerial imagery (Figure 1a). Some information is relatively easy to
extract from true color, 3-band imagery (e.g., the presence and extent of submerged
vegetation),...