EO for Kelp Review Paper Published – Frontiers in Marine Science

This review paper of remote sensing of kelp for management was just published by coauthors at the University of Victoria, BC who are GEO AquaWatch contributors:

Cavanaugh KC, Bell T, Costa M, Eddy NE, Gendall L, Gleason MG, Hessing-Lewis M, Martone R, McPherson M, Pontier O, Reshitnyk L, Beas-Luna R, Carr M, Caselle JE, Cavanaugh KC, Flores Miller R, Hamilton S,
Heady WN, Hirsh HK, Hohman R, Lee LC, Lorda J, Ray J, Reed DC, Saccomanno VR and Schroeder SB (2021) A Review of the Opportunities and Challenges for Using Remote Sensing for Management of Surface-Canopy Forming Kelps.
Front. Mar. Sci. 8:753531. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2021.753531

Groundwater, key to the Sustainable Development Goals

2nd introductory webinar to the May 2022 International Conference
Groundwater, key to the Sustainable Development Goals
25 November 2021
14h30 – 16h30 CET
Register here

The 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all UN Member States are our universal blueprint to protect the planet and to ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.

Water cuts across all SDGs and the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation are central to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. Water is crucial for advancing human rights, health, education, gender equality and work, as well as for food security, reducing poverty, tackling climate change, and enabling peace, justice, and sustainability. The eight
targets of SDG 6 on clean water and sanitation cover universal and equitable access to water, sanitation, and hygiene; water quality; water-use efficiency; integrated water resources management (IWRM); water-related ecosystems; international cooperation; and local participation. Beyond SDG 6, a dozen SDG targets are directly linked to freshwater.

Some 2.5 billion people depend solely on groundwater for their daily needs. The sustainable and science- based management of this precious resource is therefore key to achieving the SDG water-related targets.

• This webinar will explore the role and importance of the sustainable management of groundwater in the context of the SDGs and the SDG water-related targets, as well as underline the vital importance of preserving the quality and availability of groundwater in the face of climate change and increasing pressures on the resource.

• It will also update participants on the upcoming international Conference on Groundwater and the SDGs (‘Groundwater: Key to the Sustainable Development Goals’). The link of the conference is above. The conference is co-organized by the French Chapter of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (CFH-AIH), UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (UNESCO IHP), and the French Water Partnership (FWP), the Conference will take place in Paris on 18- 20 May 2022 under the patronage of the French National Commission for UNESCO and with the support of the French Ministry of the Ecological Transition, the Seine-Normandy Water Agency, and Sorbonne University.

• French/English simultaneous interpretation will be provided

Water Quality Analysis Ready Data – Call for Special Issue Contributions

The monitoring of water quality is extremely important for environmental, human and economic health. Coastal and inland water quality data are used to support water resource management and timely decision making. However, these data are scarce at the global, regional, and national levels, due to the lack of monitoring networks and capacity.

The number of studies about the use of Earth Observation for monitoring water quality in coastal and inland aquatic environments has grown in the last decade. However, the operational use of this technology is still limited, especially due to the lack of expertise and infrastructure to access, process, and utilize the Earth Observation data for local, regional, and national decision-making. To promote the use of Earth Observation as a decision-making tool, different programs have been developing Analysis-Ready Data (ARD) for water quality.

This Special Issue on “Analysis-Ready Data from Earth Observations for Water Quality: Development and Applications” is focused on studies that are using or developing ARD related to water quality. Therefore, studies developing, applying, calibrating, or validating ARD are encouraged to submit to this Special Issue. Some of the water-quality parameters that are of interest to this Special Issue, without being limited to, are the following:

  • Aquatic Reflectance (or Remote Sensing Reflectance);
  • Chlorophyll-a;
  • Colored Dissolved Organic Matter;
  • Phycocyanin;
  • Total Suspended Solids;
  • Trophic State Index;
  • Turbidity;
  • Water Temperature.

Dr. Igor Ogashawara
Dr. Carmen Castro-Cillero
Guest Editors

Find out more here:

Register to Attend: 2nd PrimeWater MultiUser Panel Workshop

You are invited to take part in the second PrimeWater MUP workshop which will take place from 15 to 19 Nov 2021.

About the Multi User Panel (MUP): The purpose of the MUP is to serve as an international panel of users providing expert feedback on EO-enabled services developed or extended in the context of the PrimeWater project and participate in the co-generation process itself through dialogue.

The first MUP workshop, held in October 2020, gathered initial feedback on what different users think about different services (e.g. monitoring water quality, forecasting, and provision of decision support on forecast and observations).

This second MUP meeting 15th-19th November as ‘Stakeholders week’ with participants from the following sectors:

  • Disaster risk management
  • Amenity / Recreation
  • Aquaculture
  • Water resource management
  • Potable water production
  • Energy (thermal)

Stakeholders from each sector will be invited to a 2.5-hour session during this week. Each day, we will focus on a different sector:

  • Day 1: Water Resources Management
  • Day 2: Disaster Risk Management
  • Day 3: Potable Water
  • Day 4: Energy Sector (focus on thermal plants)
  • Day 5: Amenity, Recreation and Aquaculture

The main objectives of this workshop will be:

  • To provide an overview and update on the services that PrimeWater can offer to participants.
  • To understand how different sectors are using EO service to address issues such as Extreme hydrological events (EHEs) and harmful algal bloom (HAB) events.
  • To discuss the added value of PrimeWater products when addressing these issues (e.g., advanced predictive tools based on hydrological and ecological forecasts; Early Warning System; EO-monitoring and hydro-ecological modeling tools; near-surface and satellite remote sensing and hydrodynamic modeling tools).

Registration is now open: https://www.primewater.eu/2021/10/15/register-now-for-the-primewater-multi-user-panel-stakeholders-week-15-19-nov-2021/.

For any questions, please contact samuela.guida@iwahq.org

Release of JEDI-MPAS to the Community

The JCSDA is excited to announce the first public release of JEDI-MPAS to the community.

JEDI-MPAS is a multi-component software package that provides everything that is needed to run data assimilation applications for the atmospheric core of the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS).  The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the JEDI core team jointly develop JEDI-MPAS.

MPAS is a collaborative project for developing atmosphere, ocean and other earth-system simulation components for use in climate, regional climate and weather studies, whose primary development partners are Los Alamos National Laboratory and NCAR. The atmospheric core of MPAS solves the the fully compressible nonhydrostatic equations of fluid motion on an MPAS unstructured Voronoi mesh and offers a subset of the Advanced Research WRF physical parameterizations.  MPAS is used at NCAR for research into Earth-System predictability, spanning both weather and climate.

JEDI-MPAS employs MPAS’s native meshes, including regional and variable-resolution meshes, and performs I/O with native MPAS-A files.

Find out more here.