Ocean Inhabitant Forecasting System

Jackson and Tull and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will develop the ¿Ocean Inhabitant Forecasting System¿ providing the Navy a real time, independent method for selecting environmentally safe test areas. The Ocean Inhabitant Forecasting System will merge real-time satellite data from the SeaStar spacecraft with in situ measurements from several autonomous offshore data collection platforms. These data will be archived and form the basis for producing a real-time display of marine life over a significant ocean area. The spatial and temporal observational comprehensives afforded from access to satellite ocean color data combined with the in situ ocean color data at and below the sea surface, telemetered from the data buoys, will provide a clear view of the existing concentration of microscopic marine plants (phytoplankton). This SBIR proposal is to develop the image analysis system for processing, displaying, and analyzing satellite and buoy data products and ancillary data. This system will format the science data at full resolution, including radiometric and geometric calibration and georeferencing, and map the reconstructed data on uniform space-time grid scales. The analysis package will contain the reasoning logic for deriving a display of the ¿ocean inhabitant probability¿ derived from these data products.