PhD project: Land-ocean interactions in arctic coastal waters: Ocean Color remote sensing and the current trajectory of ecosystem change
Supervisors: Prof Jürgen Fischer (Freie Universität Berlin), Dr Paul Overduin (AWI, Potsdam), Harald Krawczyk (German Space Agency, Berlin Adlershof)
Arctic coastal and shelf regions are strongly influenced by climate warming and consequent sea ice reduction. The ecosystems of these regions are controlled by geo-bio interactions between ocean and land. Wind induced resuspension in shallow shelf areas river sediment input and coastal intensify turbidity events, causing low transparencies which affect large areas of the inner shelf. During such events, biogeochemical optical constituents such as colored dissolved organic matter Chlorophyll-a and Suspended Particulate Material absorb and scatter most light in the surface water.
This PhD project focuses on Ocean Color (OC) remote sensing which provides a synoptic view of biogeochemical substances in the surface ocean with high spatial and temporal resolutions and therefore aids in a better understanding of land-river-ocean interactions in arctic shelf regions. In cooperation with the FU Berlin, DLR and AWI it is planned to develop improved regional OC products and apply them to study and monitor transport processes and long term changes in arctic coastal systems.
