You are here: Home › Stressors › Resource Use ›
South Florida

South Florida

Abstract

South Florida is a dynamic shallow water ecosystem, and this project is focusing on two different aspects of the ecosystem. The first part on the project is observing seagrass trends within Florida bay. Massive seagrass die offs have been reported in Florida Bay starting in the mid to late 80s. Bottom albedo has been shown to be a useful way to document seagrass decline. We are using AVHRR and SeaWiFS imagery to estimate the bottom albedo of the bay. Bottom Albedo is essentially the brightness of the bottom. This can be used as a proxy for seagrass cover. Segrass will absorb light and appear dark in the estimated bottom albedo imagery, whereas sediments scatter light and will appear bright in the imagery. We have 21 years of available imagery, so that we can describe decadal seagrass changes.

The second part of the project will focus on turbidity observations made from SeaWiFS. The water clarity in the Florida Keys and Florida Bay has been declining for the past several years. It has been debated if this is due to advection of water from the west Florida Shelf or if the clarity is decreasing due to local factors from the keys or if the water quality is due to increasing population from within the Miami area affecting the sloughs that provide freshwater into Florida Bay.   

Objectives

Two input parameters are needed to determine bottom albedo: bathymetry and satellite derived red reflectance. We have developed a method to explain 84% of the variance between the AVHRR and SeaWiFS sensors. We can thereby document spatial changes in the seagrass community over a 21 year timeseries using data merged from AVHRR and SeaWiFS.

The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary have reported declining water quality over the last several years. This project is designed to test the feasibility of whether the decline in water quality is due to water within the keys and the adjacent Florida Bay or from water from the west Florida shelf being advected down the coast to the keys.

Time Frame

2006.

For More Information

Project Manager:
Tim.Wynne@noaa.gov
1305 East West Highway
SSMC-IV, N/SCI-1
Silver Spring, MD 20910
301-713-3028 x139