POSTER Session 2

ASSESSMENT OF A SHALLOW WATER BIO-OPTICAL MODEL FOR THE INDIAN RIVER LAGOON, FLORIDA

The Indian River Lagoon (IRL) is a shallow water estuarine system that stretches 200 kilometers on the east of Florida and is one of the most biodiverse estuaries in North America. The IRL sustains seagrass meadows, fisheries, and home to megafauna such as the bottlenose dolphin, loggerhead turtles and manatees. The IRL has been under increasing environmental stress from human and natural pressures. Periodic algal blooms have led to large fish kills and loss of seagrass acreage, impacting higher trophic levels in the food web. Currently, there are no bio-optical models tuned for the IRL, which is challenged owing to its shallowness and influence from land runoff and coastal ocean interactions. The total water leaving radiance in shallow waters is influenced by (the resulting) scattering within the water column and bottom surface, requiring models to successfully categorize their corresponding constituents. This project aims to develop and test a regional shallow water bio-optical model using a coupled in-water and benthic components. Here, we are testing the generalized SWIM (McKinna et al.2015) and HOPE (Lee et al. 1998) shallow water models, and tuning benthic types and inherent optical properties (IOP) sub-component models with local data. We are using Hydrolight to aid in developing the attenuation component of the model, and to evaluate the optical conditions when the bottom is contributing to the surface reflectance. We evaluate retrieved IOPs and benthic types from the inversion models with our data set. Ultimately, these models will be used for remote sensing applications.

*Ipanema Mora-Carrera, Florida Atlantic University, USA

Timothy S. Moore, Florida Atlantic University, USA

Zachary Wistort, Florida Atlantic University, USA

Stephanie Schreiber, Florida Atlantic University, USA

Srinivas Kolluru, Florida Atlantic University, USA

Alberto Tonizzo, Florida Atlantic University, USA

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