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JPR Advance Access originally published online on December 16, 2008
Journal of Plankton Research 2009 31(3):287-300; doi:10.1093/plankt/fbn116
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© 2008 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Development and application of an algorithm for detecting Phaeocystis globosa blooms in the Case 2 Southern North Sea waters

Rosa Astoreca1,*, Véronique Rousseau1, Kevin Ruddick2, Cécile Knechciak1, Barbara Van Mol2, Jean-Yves Parent1 and Christiane Lancelot1

1 Ecologie des Systèmes Aquatiques (ESA), Faculté des Sciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Campus Plaine, CP 221, Boulevard du Triomphe, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium 2 Management Unit of the North Sea Mathematical Models (MUMM), Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, 100 Gulledelle, B-1200 Brussels, Belgium

* CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: rastorec{at}ulb.ac.be

Received on August 1, 2008; accepted on November 6, 2008


  Abstract

While mapping algal blooms from space is now well-established, mapping undesirable algal blooms in eutrophicated coastal waters raises further challenge in detecting individual phytoplankton species. In this paper, an algorithm is developed and tested for detecting Phaeocystis globosa blooms in the Southern North Sea. For this purpose, we first measured the light absorption properties of two phytoplankton groups, P. globosa and diatoms, in laboratory-controlled experiments. The main spectral difference between both groups was observed at 467 nm due to the absorption of the pigment chlorophyll c3 only present in P. globosa, suggesting that the absorption at 467 nm can be used to detect this alga in the field. A Phaeocystis-detection algorithm is proposed to retrieve chlorophyll c3 using either total absorption or water-leaving reflectance field data. Application of this algorithm to absorption and reflectance data from Phaeocystis-dominated natural communities shows positive results. Comparison with pigment concentrations and cell counts suggests that the algorithm can flag the presence of P. globosa and provide quantitative information above a chlorophyll c3 threshold of 0.3 mg m–3 equivalent to a P. globosa cell density of 3 x 106 cells L–1. Finally, the possibility of extrapolating this information to remote sensing reflectance data in these turbid waters is evaluated.

Corresponding editor: William Li


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