SeaWiFS Chlorophyll Concentrations: Ocean Color Data for Alaskan Waters

Alaskan coastal regions, including the Bering Sea and Prince William Sound, are covered by this dataset. NASA's Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) on the SeaStar spacecraft collects ocean color data in eight wavelength bands. The Local Area Coverage (LAC) data provides 1.1 km resolution imagery, with archived images available from 1998 onward.

Use Cases

• Monitor phytoplankton blooms and ocean health based on chlorophyll concentration data.
• Study seasonal and interannual variability in marine primary productivity for specific Alaskan regions.
• Validate and calibrate ocean color models using high-resolution Local Area Coverage (LAC) sensor data.
• Analyze spatial patterns of bio-optical properties in coastal zones like Cook Inlet or Bristol Bay.

Strengths

• Data originates from NASA's SeaWiFS Project, an authoritative source for ocean color remote sensing.
• Provides high-resolution Local Area Coverage (LAC) with 1.1 km spatial coverage.
• Offers a long temporal record, with imagery archived from 1998 through the present.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Geographic coverage is limited to specific Alaskan regions listed in the description.

Provenance

Source

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's SeaWiFS Project.

Collection Method

Collected by the SeaWiFS instrument on the Orbiting Sciences Corporation's SeaStar spacecraft in a sun-synchronous orbit at 705 km.

Time Range

1998 through the present.

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Southeast Alaska, Bering Sea, Bristol Bay, Cook Inlet, Northern Gulf of Alaska, Kodiak Island, Prince William Sound, Yakutat Bay.