POSTER SESSION 3
15:30–17:30, Wednesday, September 16
Poster Session | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Schedule at a Glance
ABSTRACT 1354 | POSTER 83
MODEL DOMAIN GAPS IN OCEAN COLOR ALGORITHMS
Measurements of ocean color can be used to estimate of important variables such as concentration of the photosynthetic pigments within phytoplankton or suspended sediments in the water column. Yet these estimates are data-driven rather than based on physical relationships, and they typically yield much larger errors when applied to conditions outside their training domain. This can be particularly true when using complex machine learning models with many input parameters. Here we use a simple geometric concept, called a convex hull, to define the range of conditions where estimates can be trusted. This approach determines whether data points, such as satellite pixels intended for chlorophyll-a retrieval, fall within or outside the boundary of data used to train the model. We find that large portions of the ocean are frequently outside the domain encompassing data used to develop models, which can lead to poor or unreliable estimates of key biological properties. These gaps are generally largest in the oligotrophic gyres, but they vary across seasons and locations, and become more pronounced as input dimensionality increases. Understanding these limitations and biases is critical in a changing ocean. Our work provides an interpretable metric that points to specific regions and times that should be flagged in the short-term to inform data users and sampled in the long-term, with the hope of better understanding the ocean’s ecological and biogeochemical diversity.
Patrick Gray, University of Maine, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8997-5255
Charlotte Begouen-Demeaux, University of Maine, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0471-5022
Alison Chase, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1862-9822
Robert Frouin, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4770-389X
Emmanuel Boss, University of Maine, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8334-9595
Poster Session | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Schedule at a Glance
