Topical Area: Water Quality

Edward Armstrong, Technology Planning and Management Corporation, NOAA Coastal Services Center, Charleston, SC; Richard P. Stumpf and Megan L. Frayer, U.S. Geological Survey, Center for Coastal Geology, St. Petersburg, FL; and John Brock, NOAA Coastal Services Center, Charleston, SC.

A collaboration between the USGS and the NOAA Coastal Services Center is currently underway to develop a CD-ROM of information relevant to the water quality trends in Florida Bay since 1985. The data sets include AVHRR satellite reflectance imagery (over 1000 images), which has been used to establish the patterns and trends in light attenuation and suspended solids in the Bay, fixed station time-series meteorological data, in-situ water quality observations (chlorophyll, salinity, TSS, etc.) and spatial maps of seagrass extent, benthic type, bathymetery,

ocean color and many others. The images are in GEOTIFF format, suitable for import into GIS and image processing software, and other spatial data sets are in ArcView shapefiles. A Java based image browser under development will allow the user to explore the imagery in more detail including overlaying the ancillary data sets as shapefiles on the raster satellite images and examining the actual radiometeric pixel values. These datasets and tools will allow coastal managers and scientists to easily place water quality observations in context with retrospective satellite reflectance imagery.