University Events

Description: The School for Marine Science and Technology
Department of Estuarine and Ocean Sciences
Seminar Announcement

"Novel Techniques in Environmental Monitoring: Niche Models, Remote Sensing and Soundscapes"

Lauren Freeman
NRC Postdoctoral Fellow
Naval Research Lab


Wednesday,September 13, 2017
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

SMAST, Room 204
706 S. Rodney French Blvd., New Bedford, MA

Abstract:
Recent technological and computing advances provide an opportunity to apply novel statistical techniques, big data analysis, and emergent technologies to broaden the spatio-temporal scope for environmental monitoring and assessment of regional ocean environments, particularly those under stress from pollution, sedimentation, fishing, and climate change. As an example, novel techniques in coral reef monitoring, i.e. niche models, remote sensing image analysis, and the use of soundscapes, will be presented and discussed. Coral reefs are found to have general habitat constriction under both conservative and business as usual climate change scenarios for the coming century. The reefs in the Indian Ocean, and the marginal coral reef habitats of the Pacific Ocean, are best suited to the shifted oceanographic conditions predicted by climate models. Niche models (also called species distribution models or maximum entropy models) calculate a habitat suitability index based on environmental data at locations where a species is known to occur. Use of niche models as a monitoring and conservation tool, by projecting habitat suitability of particular species or groups over time and under different climate change scenarios, provides a baseline understanding of the habitable space of a species or ecosystem, and where that space occurs under different stress scenarios such as climate change. Real time monitoring and assessment is still needed alongside such models. Two examples of emergent technologies for coral reef ecosystem assessment are remotely sensed imagery and passive acoustic soundscapes. The wider availability of hyperspectral imagery along with moored in-water sensors that provide inherent optical properties for ground-truthing, have the potential to fill large spatial gaps in monitoring for a broader understanding of these environments. Initial results from bottom type classification of Kaneohe Bay, HI from a NASA Hyspiri mission (February 2017), provides the possibility of remote sensing for coral reef environmental state. Finally, recent work on applying passive acoustic sensing methods to coral reef soundscapes demonstrates how reef environmental state can be inferred acoustically. Sound is the most efficient radiation in water, and there is increasing evidence that there are key features in reef acoustic recordings that can serve as environmental indicators. The application of big data style analysis and statistics to both acoustic and environmental data provides exciting insights into assessing marine environmental state. A combination of emergent technologies, remote sensing, high-level statistics and modeling can be used to better understand changes that occur in a wide range of marine environments.
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