On Monday May 29, we flew orthogonal lines over Newport News, VA and land. All PRISM flight data (KEY01-03) was copied onto a ship disk prior to landing.This concludes the PRISM airborne data collection phase of the CORAL project.
On Monday, May 8, the flight team was able to transit from Yap to Palau. The Palau airport is definitely busier and more accessible than Yap. However, both Yap and Palau provided great service, even without private aircraft dedicated fixed base operators.
On Thursday, March 2 the flight team successfully collected 7 lines over the Big Island (FL05). On Friday, March 3 the flight team flight team successfully collected 8 lines over Maui and Oahu (FL06). On Saturday, March 4 the flight team attempted to collect lines over Oahu, Maui, Lanai, and Big Island, but were unsuccessful due to rapidly changing cloud cover associated with the incoming front (FL07).
The CORAL science team has completed in-water operations in Kanehoe Bay, Oahu. They are now attending and presenting at the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) 2017 Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, HI.
On Wednesday, February 22, the aircraft team conducted flight FL03, collecting 7 lines over Kaneohe Bay and parts of the Big Island and Maui.
The CORAL science team has begun in-water operations in Kanehoe Bay, Oahu. The team is based at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) on Coconut Island. On Thursday, February 16 the first science flight was initiated and PRISM collected 10 science flight lines over coral reefs around Kauai, Ni’ihau, and Oahu. On Friday, February 17, the second science flight was initiated and PRISM collected 12 lines over parts of Moloka’i, Lana’i, Maui, and Kaho’olawe.
The CORAL Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) Portable Remote Imaging SpectroMeter (PRISM) flight data collection campaign is now complete. All areas were covered, albeit some with weather conditions better than others. The Tempus Gulfstream-IV/PRISM team flew ~56 science hours, imaged over 100 flight lines, and performed a dozen ground health checks during the past six weeks in Australia. By rough calculations, we imaged over 30,000 square kilometers of reefs, and open ocean, at ~8 meter/pixel resolution. This results in over 500,000,000 oversampled pixels, each of which has 240 spectr
For five weeks, clouds and high winds have prevented the CORAL project from venturing into the Torres Strait and northeast Great Barrier Reef (GBR) regions. However, on Wednesday, October 12, the clouds cleared to a remarkable degree, allowing the CORAL flight team to image one of three regions in and around the Torres Strait. The skies continued to be reasonably clear over the following days, allowing the flight team to image the remaining two northeast GBR regions.
Science Team: On September 20, the benthic cover team visited five (5) sites, two (2) in the middle of the lagoon, one (1) off a mooring on the south side, and two (2) on the reef flat. The benthic cover team also conducted in-water spectroscopy at the mooring site. The optics team conducted a third IOP/AOP sensitivity study during a tidal cycle on the northern end of Heron Island. The metabolism team set-up instrumentation for gradient flux measurements at two reef slope sites on the south side.
What a difference a week makes. The weather has started to cooperate and we have now covered four of the nine flight areas. In addition, we also have concurrent measurements over both in-water calibration sites: Lizard Island and Heron Island.
Science Team:
Aircraft Team: Friday, September 9 marked the first successful CORAL science data collection day for PRISM on board the Tempus Gulfstream IV!
