NEWS

Ocean Imaging Newsletter - Volume 1, Issue 1
Ocean Imaging Newsletter - Volume 2, Issue 1
Ocean Imaging Newsletter - Volume 2, Issue 2
Ocean Imaging Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 1
Ocean Imaging Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 2

5/19/2010 - OI participates in Gulf of Mexico oil spill response
On 5/1/2010 OI's oil spill mapping team was summoned to the Gulf by NOAA and British Petroleum to provide our capabilities during the vast response to the Mississippi Canyon 252 oil spill. NOAA has provided OI with one of it's Twin Otter aircraft on which OI mounted its multispectral color and thermal IR instruments. Guided by daily-changing imaging target priorities from the various Command Center groups, the OI team is flying daily (and sometimes twice-daily) missions, mapping the oil's extents, weathering state and thickness. So far, OI's data have been used to: 1) help provide input and validation data for NOAA's oil spill trajectory forecast models; 2) document the effects of surface and subsurface dispersant applications; 3) provide recognizance and documentation of the existence and thickness of oil at the far boundaries of the spill; 4) map oil reaching the shoreline.

The image data are processed while still airborne and immediately after touchdown. Fully processed oil state/thickness maps are disseminated to multiple Command Centers as they become available within 2-3 hours after the flight mission. A simplified map product specifically designed to help guide oil recovery vessels will also start being disseminated in near-real time this week. "Through our MMS research project, we were planning do conduct some testing and demonstrations in the Gulf this coming fall," said Ocean Imaging's president, Dr. Jan Svekovsky, "but fate quickly turned the planned demo into the real thing." OI's high resolution oil thickness mapping provides much needed information not obtainable from satellite images which generally cannot be used to discern and unrecoverable thin oil sheens versus thicker oil accumulations that can be skimmed or treated with dispersants.

03/08/2010 - OI gets US Dept. of Interior's Cooperative Conservation Award
OI's oil spill mapping work funded by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) and California Dept. of Fish and Game's Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) has been selected for the 2010 Cooperative Conservation Award by the US Dept. of Interior. The collaboration of federal (MMS), state (OSPR) and corporate (OI) teams has led to the development of new oil spill response technologies that have already improved response activities in several recent oil spills in California. The award ceremony will be conducted in Washington, DC in May, 2010

03/01/2010 - OI awarded SeaGrant funds to map Marine Protected Areas
California Sea Grant has awarded OI a 3-year grant to generate a high resolution baseline data base of natural resources in estuarine, intertidal and shallow subtidal areas related to the newly created Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in North-Central California. The project also includes annual mapping of kelp beds over the entire region and persistence analyses aimed to establish the pre-MPA variability in kelp and estuarine resources using time series of historical and recently collected data. "We are very excited to become part of the MPA-related studies", said OI's president, Dr. Jan Svejkovsky. "We will be collaborating with numerous academic research teams who will get access to our aerial remote sensing technologies through this program".

09/01/2006 - OI to Investigate Mine-polluted Creeks in the Sierras
California's Sierra Mountains have been subject to intense mining activity since the 1800s. Some of this activity has left major impacts on the Mountain's vegetation and wildlife. One such area is the Leviathan Mine - an abandoned sulfur mine in Alpine County, California. Inactive since 1962, contaminants from the mine severely polluted a neighboring creek system and greatly affected surrounding vegetation and aquatic wildlife. Since the late 1990s local groups as well as the state and federal government have financed various remediation efforts to bring back the area's environmental health. In collaboration with CDFG, the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California has contracted with OI to evaluate changes in creek-side (i.e. riparian) vegetation that occurred from the 1980s to the present. OI flew its DMSC aerial sensor over the mine-affected creeks, as well as a number of unaffected creeks for control purposes. Archived aerial imagery collected by the USGS in the 1980s will now be analyzed for the presence of riparian habitat and the two data sets will be utilized in a vegetation change analysis. OI also conducted its own field sampling work to train the classification algorithms and validate the results.

04/09/05 - OI Funded by Minerals Management Service to Expand Oil Spill Sensing Research
The Minerals Management Service recently awarded Ocean Imaging a research grant for developing and testing capabilities to quickly map the thickness of oil films on the ocean surface using a portable 4-channel aerial imager. Accurate estimation of oil film thickness during an oil spill is extremely important for calculating the total volume of oil spilled, and also for deciding which clean-up method to utilize. Unfortunately, several former techniques to measure oil thickness from overflying aircraft have either failed or the instrumentation is so complex and bulky that it cannot be routinely deployed during an oil spill emergency. OI's work will aim to establish robust relationships between oil thickness and its reflectance in 4 specially chosen wavelengths. Tests will be conducted over natural oil seeps in Southern California as well as at MMS' Ohmsett testing facility in New Jersey. The project's results should allow MMS, Coast Guard and state agencies to gain operational oil spill thickness measurement capabilities with economical and easy-to-deploy instruments.

04/05/2004 - OI to Investigate Oil Spill Recognizance with Aerial Imaging
Ocean Imaging has received funding for development of methodologies to detect a variety of hydrocarbon compounds on water and oil-impacted soils on land with its highly portable DMSC aerial imager. The two year project, funded by the California Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response, will focus on fine-tuning easy-to-deploy, economical aerial imaging systems to detect oil spills or illegal dumps as well as map damage in coastal habitats caused by beached oil. "We've had several instances when we captured oil and fuel spills by chance during flights for other projects," said Jamie Kum, OI's aerial data acquisitions engineer. "This project will help us maximize the system's detection efficiency." The long-term goal is to develop methodology which would allow oil response agencies such as OSPR to find oil spills and help guide recovery operations in an effective but cost-efficient matter. The project includes a demonstration during which imagery will be acquired, processed aboard the aircraft and disseminated to ground crews in near-real-time via satellite telephone.

11/06/2003 – OI Receives New NASA Funding
In late October ’03 Ocean Imaging has been awarded a $500,000 grant by NASA to generate a global map of kelp reef communities and study their vulnerability to changes. While considerable research attention is already placed on the effects of changing climate upon tropical coral reef habitats, there is practically no information on how global changes are affecting temperate reef communities. Many such habitats are dominated by kelp forests which are sensitive to changes in water temperature, turbidity and nutrient concentrations. Ocean Imaging will utilize a worldwide Thematic Mapper image data base processed by EarthSat Corporation to create a first-time global map of kelp reefs as they existed in the year 2000. This data base will then be used to compare with older as well as most recent regional data to quantify ecosystem changes in different world areas. This project fits well into NASA’s present research emphasis on studying how the Earth is changing and what the consequences are.

07/08/2003 – Ocean Imaging Receives 2-year Extension on Water Quality Monitoring Contract
Following a very successful first year of utilizing remote sensing to supplement traditional field-based water quality monitoring programs in the San Diego/Tijuana, Mexico region, Ocean Imaging has received a 2-year contract extension for continuing the work. The project is jointly funded by the California Water Quality Control Board and operators of two regional offshore sewage outfalls. It represents the first time that a remote sensing component is a formal part of offshore outfall discharge permit specifications. OI utilizes several different types of satellite data but relies heavily on regular overflights with its DMSC multispectral aerial sensor. “The DMSC overflights have three major advantages,” explains Dr. Jan Svejkovsky, OI’s President. “First, we have customized the sensor’s 4 channels for wavelengths that maximize outfall plume detection and allow spectral separation of different types of effluent sources. Second, cloudy weather is not as big a problem as with satellites, because we can often fly under them. Third, most of the time we can fly on a moment’s notice to track a spill or some other event.”

The project's major accomplishments in its first year were the establishment of plume trajectory patterns from the outfalls and several important terrestrial sources under various ocean conditions, the ability to document the true sources of beach contamination events uncovered by traditional field sampling, and the mapping of each effluent source’s spatial extents to better understand and forecast the associated contamination risks.

05/05/2003 – Ocean Imaging begins study of Bering Sea environmental variability
OI began work on a federally and state funded research project aiming to define whether environmental variations in the Bering Sea over the past 20 years have played a role in the devastating drop in salmon stocks along its Alaskan shores. Local commercial and subsistence fisheries have been virtually wiped out, and the Norton Sound and Kuskokwim Bay areas have been declared federal disaster regions since the late 90s. There are numerous theories on why the salmon disappeared, ranging from overfishing to deadly plankton blooms, to overabundance of killer whales. It is not even known if the main causes are based on land – in the streams where the salmon get born and spawn, or in the sea – where they spend much of their life. OI will use several types of satellite data to examine the sea environment and to document any changes coinciding with the salmon population declines on several different spatial and temporal scales.