-: All right. Hello, hi, everybody.
And welcome to our third Thursday presentation.
We have a really wonderful talk for you today,
and thank you for joining us.
We have people from all across the United States
and several countries including some new ones
such as the Tunisia, Jordan, Kiraboss.
So all are welcome, thank you for joining us.
So this presentation is part of the national,
Office of National Marine Sanctuaries webinars series
and also the Mokupapapa Discovery Center's
third Thursday presentation series.
And the National Marine Sanctuary System manages sites
across our country.
We have several sites
on the Eastern side of the United States,
such as Stellwagen Bank,
Mallows Bay is the newest, one of the newest ones,
Monitor, Gray's Reef, Florida Keys, (indistinct) Keys,
Flower Garden Banks.
We have Greater Farallones, Cordell Bank, Monterey Bay
on the West Coast.
Here in the Pacific,
we have two sanctuaries, two sites in Hawaii,
the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale
National Marine Sanctuary,
Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, that I work for
and our co-facilitators work for.
as well as we have American Samoa down South of us
and also a Marine National Monument down there.
We work for Papahanaumokuakea
and we're the world's largest fully marine protected area.
And we span 583,000 square miles
of the Central Pacific, Central-North Pacific Ocean.
And we protect the area for many, many unique species
such as monk seals, green sea turtles,
a lot of unique island species in this region.
And it's also a very important cultural place
for native Hawaiians,
particularly the first two islands of Nihoa
and Mokumanamana,
where there are the highest concentrations
of ceremonial sites in the entire archipelago.
So I'll ask Malia and Justin to turn on their webcams
and join us briefly.
So these are our hosts for this presentation.
Malia Evans is our Education and Native Hawaiian Outreach
Program Coordinator.
And I am Andy Collins.
I'm the Education Coordinator
for Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument,
working in Hilo at the Mokupapapa Discovery Center.
And also Justin Umholtz who is our Education Coordinator
over at Mokupapapa Discovery Center.
And so these folks will be handling your questions.
Any technical issues you might have,
please if you have any problems with your audio
or anything like that,
please type them into,
into the question box or into the chat.
Oh, here we go, their webinars are coming on the webcams.
And they will do their best to help you
and to,
to get your audio working.
Typically audio problems are what people have
but it doesn't look like we're having problems right now.
So that's good.
So here's our center over in Hilo,
our Mokupapapa Discovery Center.
We have a wonderful 3,500 gallon saltwater aquarium.
We are the only visitor center for Papahanaumokuakea
and we greet about 70,000 visitors per year when we're open.
Of course, like many places were closed right now
due to the pandemic,
but we've been conducting these virtual presentations
and other things to reach out to our audience.
So thank you so very much for joining us.
And if you ever get over to Hilo in the future,
please make sure to visit us right there on the Bay front,
on beautiful Hilo Bay.
But all of our sites across the country,
all the National Marine Sanctuary sites
and Marine National Monuments
protect these areas for many different reasons.
One of which is biodiversity.
These are some of the richest marine sites on the planet.
Also there very many unique shipwrecks
and other maritime heritage resources
in this sites that we protect.
Some of them are dedicated mostly to maritime heritage
such as Thunder Bay and the Great Lakes.
And out here in Papahanaumokuakea
we have over, you know, dozens shipwrecks
dating back to the whaling era and prior to that.
Also this is a picture from Mokumanamana
of some of those unique operates on the island,
the ceremonial site.
The whole island is essentially a large ceremonial site
composed of multiple different components.
But many sites protect cultural heritage in their locations.
They also provide shelter and unique spaces for,
like here we have two, my Hawaiian monk seal
and green tea turtle, not following social distancing.
This was prior to the pandemic (laughs).
But these are special resting places for those animals.
We also do a lot of education programs
such as this webinar outreach
at different events and online.
And research in these sites.
We do quite a bit of research on how are the sites doing?
What are some of the unique animals?
What questions can we ask to help management
of those special sites?
And how can we gain those answers to research programs?
Monitoring for things such as changes, like climate change.
We monitor a site to understand
what the impacts of climate change, marine debris,
and things like that.
We also have a really lot of unique
resource protection programs such as down here on the coral,
in the Florida Keys, they do some really unique work
in out planting of corals to restore damaged reefs
or reefs that have been damaged
by like boats running a ground or things like that.
And in this time of COVID when we're all stressed
and really, you know, losing our place in a lot of ways
(indistinct)
it's very important to reconnect with nature
and to reconnect with our spiritual sense.
And National Marine Sanctuaries
provide a wonderful place to do that.
Whether it's through diving, kayaking
or just going on a hike
and reconnecting with your inner spiritual sense
and external spiritual sense.
So these places provide that.
And lastly, we can't do any of this without our volunteers.
We have huge volunteer programs across the program.
And these people help us to do citizen science,
cleanup marine debris.
There are docents in our discovery centers
and other things.
So if you wanna volunteer, please reach out to any of us.
But today, and I'll ask the presenters
to turn their webcams off,
we have a special presentation
about How NASA Satellites Help Protect the Coral Reefs
of Papahanaumokuakea.
And we have four wonderful presenters for you.
We have Anna Ballasiotes
who is a recent graduate from Oregon State University,
and that's in Geography,
specializing in remote sensing of coastal pollution
and populations marginalized by conflict.
She'll be our main presenter.
Keo Lopes who worked in our office.
He's a JIMAR/PMNM Field Tech and Remote Sensing PhD student
at UH Manoa.
Ginah Tran, who is a recent graduate
from University of California Berkeley
with a BA in Geography,
and specialization in Earth System Science
and Geographic Information Systems.
And last but not least, Taylor Orcutt,
who let us know that he will be graduating this week
from, you know, UC Berkeley.
And by Monday, he should have his degree in hand.
At this point though,
he's still finishing his undergrad degree
with a major in Ecosystem Management and Forestry.
So I will turn it over to Anna.
If you turned on your webcams.
(indistinct)
Hold on for one second while we switch presenters.
And I will turn off my webcam.
So enjoy the talk
-: Great.
Team is this, can we see this all properly?
(team chattering)
Great.
I'll pass it to Keo who is starting off our presentation.
-: Hallo, hi, good morning.
And thank you, Andy and the team
for that gracious introduction to our team.
First of all, I'd like to thank the team
for making my NASA DEVELOP experience amazing.
I didn't think we could accomplish as much as we did
in this short 10-week time.
It was a great experience for me
and I enjoyed working with you guys.
I'm kinda getting sentimental here
because this is technically our last scheduled talk
with our group together.
I'd like to quickly just describe
the NASA DEVELOP Program.
It's a nation,
nationwide program run by NASA
that promotes the use of remote sensing tools
and the earth observation systems of NASA
by cultivating students
and anyone who's interested in remote sensing
for this 10-week internship
that's usually based at the NASA sites,
but obviously it was remote for the last two
sessions.
Our program was ran out of the NASA Ames Research Center
in California.
And our lead was Dr. Juan Perez-Torres,
Juan Torres-Perez, apologies.
And that's where we met virtually.
Our project was Hawaii water resources
which is about what we're going to explain to you shortly.
Our title was Utilizing NASA Earth Observation
to Assess Ocean Conditions
to Analyze the Spread of Nuisance Red Algae,
Chondria Tumulosa,
in Papahanaumokaukea Marine National Monument.
That image is a screenshot of our product.
So I'd like to just elaborate a little bit
on what Andy has mentioned already
about the monument,
particularly our study area
which is one of the atolls, Manawai,
otherwise known as Pearl and Hermes Atoll.
It's more northerly central relocated in the monument,
and that was our primary study area
due to the discovery of this Chondria tumulosa.
Our satellite imagery availability and study period
was January '13 to October '20th.
And the product that the team made,
will continuously the oceanographic information
you guys will see in the tool.
And to confirm what Andy said earlier,
I'd like to just convert the protected conservation area
into SI units
and translate it to 1.5 million square kilometers
of protected area.
And
it protects the majority of the US
coral reef ecosystems.
And as Andy mentioned,
it's the host to a wide variety of endemic species
and endangered species in Hawaii.
I think one of the more important designations
of our monument is the UNESCO World Heritage Mixed Site
designation.
It is only one of 39 sites in the world
that has both cultural and natural designations
to team outstanding universal value for the world.
And that is pretty amazing in my mind.
We have native Hawaiian sites as Andy mentioned earlier,
for Polynesian navigation.
We have a lot of whaling heritage
that is now at the bottom of the ocean in the monument
for their final resting place,
as well as our natural,
natural environmental species.
So when the team usually goes
to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands,
we're usually disconnected from the city life and the world
and go on this amazing tour of research and discovery,
but on our last expedition up there,
it was quite devastating.
And I feel it saddened in many of us
while we were out there.
We discovered this Chondria tumulosa,
a newly discovered species of
algae
that has blanketed mass amounts of coral reefs
up in the monument at Manawai.
So this has the potential for devastating consequences
and all management partners are very concerned
with the potential damage
that this species could and is causing.
Because the site is extremely remote
and difficult to study constantly,
we turned to satellite imagery.
And that's where NASA has stepped in to partner with NOAA
and the Fish in Wildlife Service,
to start this project
and
assemble this team of crack, young,
scientific, geographic minds.
And that included myself to help them along (laughs).
So our project was to see if we could determine
the causes of this outbreak
and see if we could
determine if this outbreak will continue or not.
So we have some field data.
The picture that you see before you is in situ data
that was collected in 2019.
There's basically spot visual checks
at each of these points.
So the redder the dot, the more percent cover it was.
And to me there's these hot spot regions
where the
algae was in high percent cover
up to a 100% cover.
The reports say it was pretty well swamped
and everything under it was dead
at these particular locations.
So we had this to go on
and
to utilize in conjunction with the NASA satellite data.
Our project objectives was to develop, no pun intended,
a user interface that was easily used and free to access.
So the platform chosen was Google Earth Engine.
And we chose to look at the products
that NASA's earth observation systems could calculate,
which is chlorophyll- a, sea surface temperature,
wind velocity, salinity,
and various other products,
along with the remote sensing reflectance,
and combine it with their in situ data
to see if we could see any correlations.
Our partners for this project
was
Kauaoa Fraiola at Fish and Wildlife Service.
And Jonathan Martinez spearheaded this proposal,
presented it to NASA DEVELOP team
where Juan
decided that it was a worthy project,
and that was the birth of this NASA DEVELOP partnership.
And here's the time for the first poll question.
What is the Western name of Manawai?
-: Okay. So what is the Western name of Manawai?
Your choices are Pearl and Hermes Atoll,
French Frigate Shoals,
Midway Atoll
or Necker Island.
If you're in full screen mode,
you wanna pop out using your control panel
to answer this poll.
So go ahead. I see lots of people are responding.
We'll do about five more seconds.
And we look like we have a definite winner here.
So I'm going to close the poll
and kill your results.
Here they are.
Pearl and Hermes Atoll at 68%.
People were paying attention.
And back to you.
-: Good job guys. Good job
I will hand it off to Taylor to describe the tool.
-: So to address many of our concerns,
specifically with how remote the area is,
we created a tool within Google Engine
named the CORALS tool,
to monitor the area
and track certain ocean conditions and parameters.
Some of which kind of make (indistinct)
that may or may not be connected to the growth
and spread of Chondria tumulosa.
CORALS, standing for
the Conditions Observed in Red Algae Spread.
So we used a variety of different sensors
and satellites to acquire our data.
The ones that we used primarily in terms of satellites
that were used, notice, Aqua and Terra satellites.
We used VIIRS and we used Sentinel-3.
We used multiple satellites
because they both allowed us to track different parameters
and to track them at different resolutions.
So MODIS has a daily resolution chlorophyll-a
with a spatial resolution of about four kilometers.
VIIRS had another daily resolution
and that was a little bit finer, at one kilometer.
Sentinel-3 had the highest resolution
of a 300-meter resolution.
But the issue with selenophile
was that it was only counting chlorophyll-a as radians
and not correct it to the actual (indistinct).
So we're not actually seeing real values
which is why we also utilized VIRRS and MODIS,
so that we could get actual concentration values
even if they are slightly less fine resolution.
Can you go to the next slide.
Oh, sorry (indistinct).
So we also do used NOAA's Climate Data Record
or the NOAA CDR,
and the National Ocean Partnership Program's
Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model.
These allowed us to see things like sea surface temperature,
velocity, salinity, and sea surface height
to give us a more broad picture of what we're looking at
and from mutual parameters.
So the other tool,
we had several steps that the tool went through.
First was our data acquisition.
We gathered, like I said, Sentinel-3, Aqua and Terra MODIS,
VIIRS, HYCOM, and NOAA CDR data.
From there, we got parameters like chlorophyll-a,
Kd 490, water velocity, salinity, sea surface elevation,
and sea surface temperature.
From there, we created our outputs,
those being a visualization of these ocean conditions
over time.
And we allowed it to create time series graphs
with specified data and ocean conditions
that the user can select.
If you go to the next slide,
we can see a little bit of the tool in action.
Oh, nevermind. We have a poll question first.
-: All right. So here we have our second poll.
And the question is,
there are two major types of satellite resolution,
spatial and temporal, which one refers to time?
So go ahead and register your vote.
Lots of people are voting
And we'll give it another five seconds.
And it looks like,
oh, about three quarters of you have voted so far.
All right. I'm gonna close the poll.
And your results, Taylor,
are 92% temporal.
-: All right. Good job everyone.
-: Oh, and here we go for poll number three.
You guys haven't had much time to rest.
Okay. Here we gonna go into our third one.
So
let's see.
Satellite imagery collects spectral imagery.
Which spectral range do humans see in?
So go ahead and register your vote.
380 to 700 nanometers
or 700 to 900 nanometers.
All right. We've had about,
we'll give them 10 more seconds.
We've only had about 40% voting.
Okay. The numbers are rising, about half of you have voted.
Oh, and see, we don't have the other enters,
unfortunately, it's not showing on here
but you actually have four choices.
All right. And so the third choice is 900 to 1100 nanometers
and 220 to 370 nanometers.
All right. I'm gonna close out this poll.
And let's see what the results were.
Unfortunately, we couldn't see the last two choices.
Well, let's see what the attendees.
All right. So 60% said 380 to 700 nanometers.
And back to you, Taylor.
-: All right. So here we have a short video
showing a bit of our tool.
We'll show first half in one slide,
and then the second half we may amplify.
So just a brief overview
of the Google invention infrastructure.
So we have that layer that are just hovered over.
On the left side, we have a panel
where the user can change the location
that they're looking at,
whether they're looking at the entire monument
in that red outline,
or if they're looking at the specific atolls
and different things within it.
On the map, we have two things probably draw,
which is an outline of the National Monument
and a International Date Line which comes into play
when you're exporting some of the data.
The International Date Line messes with it,
so we wanted to put that there
so our users aren't running into any errors.
So now we're over on the right side
where the user does most of their interacting.
So we have description of what's going on.
But there, we can see they're selecting
from a variety of different parameters
that they can choose from.
And then once they select that
they can choose what satellite they want
with the resolution displayed.
That'll display a color bar,
which can show you proper ideas for your values,
which is a composite line.
And they can display that composite on the map.
We'll start to draw right away,
give it some time if you're ever using the tool
and it's speed is slow.
It does take a little bit.
It'll help draw your composite map on there
so you can help visualize it.
Up here, we can play with the transparency
so we can kind of see what's going on below,
especially when you have that brightening of color,
it's nice to see what you're looking at underneath.
And then, like I said before,
we can move around to the different atolls
in different areas, along the monument,
with the dropdown over on the left hand side.
This allows you to, you know,
see how each of the monuments are doing
and just really get an idea of exactly where you are
and not just where you,
roughly are based on your ability to, you know,
scroll in and scroll out on the monument.
So then below that,
the left hand slider is a download, import button.
If we click that,
it'll take what you're actually looking at on the map,
and we'll create an ability
for you to download an exportable image
and TIFF file or, you know, geographically referenced data
that you could then export and work with
in a program like Arc and something else.
And I think what we're trying to display here
is just that the data is global.
So it does extend beyond the reach
of what you're looking at immediately,
but it's only gonna draw
what you're looking at in that moment in time.
So here we can see
that you can also change what you're looking at.
So if you wanna solve it chlorophyll
but now you wanna specifically get the VIIRS
so a higher resolution,
you can change that as much as you want.
It's gonna draw the layer.
Keep in mind,
it's gonna add the layer on top of your pre-existing one.
So you're still gonna get that data there,
but your other layer that you were looking at before
from the Lotus data is just hidden beneath that.
And like it's showing, you can play with the transparency,
that kind of, see that still showing
they're on the bottom.
And that is utilizing the download, import button.
Like I mentioned earlier,
this will take you out to an external tab,
which will pop up a way for you to download
and save the file on your computer.
Which you could then work with later
to either analyze the specific values
or to create maps for public viewing and information.
You can go to the next slide
to see the second half of the tool.
So in the second half, is the time series graph, half of it.
So first part of it,
you're working with building your composites.
And on the second half, you can create a time series graph.
This doesn't necessarily have to impact at all
what you're doing with the deposits.
You can (indistinct) and time series graphs
but that's a totally different thing.
But at the same basic idea,
you choose your parameter,
you choose your resolution of the satellite,
and you set how long you want your graph to look for.
Essentially you'll choose a starting date
and see how far after you want to.
Then we can also sort the region, we have two options,
one of them is a point of interest
and one of them is the entire monument.
Monument justice means wherever you click
or wherever you're viewing in the middle of your screen
it's gonna draw a 20-meter buffer around it,
and create times you've checked for that.
So this might be helpful if you're specifically looking
at what Manawai's, levels you're looking at for the year.
Or if you wanna see what the entire monument is looking at
for the year, you could change the region
to the entire Papahanaumokuakea Monument.
-: Hey, Taylor. -: Yes.
-: Sorry to interrupt you for a second.
Can you move your mic, maybe a little closer to your mouth,
your audio is a little muddy.
Try that if- -: Is this better?
-: Yeah. I think that's better. -: Awesome.
-: Thank you.
-: No. Thank you so much.
So yeah. Back to the tool,
we can see, we have a little tab
that opens up showing your time series graph over here
which you can download as either CSPs or PNGs
to work with even later if you like
and to analyze the data further.
So now the user is changing it to the entire monument.
So there's time where we're gonna look at the values,
not just within your small little buffered point of interest
but your entire monument
to see how the whole thing changes
across that six-month period that we're working with.
And also just add the graph underneath of your first one.
There is a clear graphs button there,
if you ever have so many graphs working with
that you're getting a little bit lost.
You can just clear them out and start fresh
and just kind of get a better idea
of what your data is looking like.
We hope this is really helpful
for users to be able to analyze,
not just what's going on right now with the composites,
but also look at some historical data and some trend data
to get a better idea of what's going on within the monument.
-: Okay, everyone.
Thank you, Taylor
for your wonderful explanation of our tool.
We're very excited to pass this tool onto our partners
and help them make decisions
for future expeditions into the field.
And just to reiterate, the great thing about the tool
is that all you need is the link for the tool,
and everybody can use it.
Anybody who wants to collaborate with us on this problem
and you don't need an expensive software like ArcGIS
if you wanted to use the tool.
So now we're going to move on to the Statistical Analysis
portion of the presentation
and talk about some preliminary data and numbers
that we crunched together for our partners.
Are you guys able to hear me clearly?
Is it okay?
(indistinct chattering)
Okay. So next slide.
We had three main goals that we wanted to accomplish
with our analysis.
So first we wanted to validate the tool
by comparing the temperature data
that you can get from the tool
with actual in situ recordings
to see if it's reliable and if it's similar and useful.
And second, we wanted to compare the temperature data
where the alga is present
versus the areas that do not have the alga
around Manawai Atoll.
To see if they are different.
If there's something going on that we don't know about.
And lastly,
we wanted to examine the TransForce sea surface temperature
and chlorophyll-a
and just see their patterns and see if there's any changes
in the last couple of years to confirm our theory,
that these two parameters
could be what is driving to growth of Chondria tumulosa
in Manawai.
And in order to accomplish this,
we have three data sets of interest
that we wanted to use for this portion.
We have the MODIS outputs for sea surface temperature
and chlorophyll-a, straight from our tool.
And we also have in situ temperature data
from Sub-surface Temperature Recorders
that are located onsite in Manawai
from the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program.
And lastly, we also have the spatial locations of areas
where the partners have found presence of the alga,
of the alga, Chondria tumulosa.
So next slide.
Okay. So as we mentioned before,
we wanted to confirm that the temperature data from MODIS,
which is incorporated in into our tool, is reliable.
And we wanted to compare it
against the in situ temperature recordings.
And so we took the daily average temperature
from 2013 to 2020 from both datasets,
and as you can see here, it lines up quite well.
It looks like there are a couple more outliers
captured in MODIS,
but for the most part, we can say that it's reliable,
which is great.
And this is really useful
because the partners can get sea surface temperature data
for anywhere in the monument
when they select a region of interest using the tool.
And they can get temperature data for areas
that we currently don't have any recorders on site.
So that's really great.
And Next slide.
And continuing on that point,
the linear regression graph here on the left
shows that there is a strong correlation
or R squared between MODIS temperature
and in situ temperature,
which again, validates the tool's accuracy
when it comes to the temperature.
So the next thing we wanted to see
was if there is a difference between the temperature
in sites with the alga presence and sites without.
And fortunately there are sub-surface temperature recorders
near sites with and without.
So we extracted a temperature data for sites with the alga,
and did an analysis of variance or ANOVA
against sites without,
and we found no significant difference.
The box plot on the bottom right, that you can see,
it summarizes the value ranges for the sites near and far
and they are pretty similar.
And this means that the sites with alga presence
aren't unique in terms of temperature
and it's quite uniform throughout the atoll.
Next slide.
So lastly, we decided to take a special interest
in chlorophyll-a
because our partners and experts on Chondria tumulosa
such as Dr. Heather Spalding,
has suggested the impact of upwelling
and nutrient mixing in Manawai.
So for the chlorophyll-a analysis,
we took the MODIS data from our tool
and from that we extracted
the median value for every month of every year
in order to capture the seasonality trends in chlorophyll-a
and which is shown here, as you can see,
and it's measured in milligrams per cubic meter.
What we were hoping to see was that the chlorophyll-a levels
in Manawai where the algal growth is currently occurring
would be a lot higher than another atoll.
And in this instance we chose Lalo to be our control
'cause it's further away
and there's no any algal growth happening,
but we did not see that in the data.
And it seems as though the chlorophyll-a data
falls within the normal median ranges for each atoll.
In the next slide,
We're looking more closely at the, oh, pardon.
Okay. In the next slide,
we are looking closely at the chlorophyll-a data
and we're looking for more recent years,
so 2017 to 2020.
And we wanted to look at these years
specifically because we know that the outbreak
has really proliferated in 2019.
So from the two graphs, it seems that
both have about the same levels of chlorophyll-a
but with the distinct difference being that in the summer
when the temperature is warmest,
Manawai levels actually spike up
while Lalo's levels go down,
which would correspond with the nutrients being lower
when the temperature is warmer.
But with that said, we cannot say with confidence
that the chlorophyll-a by itself
has a strong effect on algal growth,
but perhaps maybe in conjunction
with warmer sea surface temperatures
and the chlorophyll-a spiking up in this summer
it could be an interesting phenomenon to explore.
And furthermore, I just wanna put a disclaimer
that the algorithm that calculates chlorophyll-a
is meant for open ocean waters.
And here we are using it in shallow waters around atoll
which can skew the data.
However, there is somebody at NOAA, Jamie Gove,
who is experienced with this type of data
and he can apply a masking to the atolls
which will give the partners more accurate calculations
for chlorophyll-a levels.
And this is the extent of the analysis
that we were able to do in the 10 weeks.
And we're hoping that once we pass it on to the partners
they can use our expertise in oceanography
to look at patterns that we might have overlooked.
And now I will pass it on to Anna,
where, oh, another poll we'll see,
where she will talk about more of the limitations
of the project and the future (indistinct)
can be done to extend up on our work.
-: Great. Thanks, Ginah.
You know, as Gina mentioned,
there are a number of errors, uncertainties
that we had to consider with this project.
And first and foremost,
was the lack of available satellite data.
This was by far the biggest challenge with this work,
not only the Sentinel-2 not covering this area
but the quality it lands at it imagery
is also not suitable for this region.
These are two major satellite constellations
that are often used for (indistinct)
And with these satellites out,
we had to figure out
what was possible to use that was also publicly available.
So we moved to sentinel-3
but as Taylor mentioned earlier,
due to the processing level of the data
provided in earth engine,
we were unable to convert the data
from radiance to reflectance
and so as could not use this for quantitative analysis,
but only qualitative analysis.
We did include two models available in earth engine,
HYCOM and NOAA CDR,
but the limitation of models must be understood.
These are not direct measurements of data
and they are also globally focused,
which means they can misconstrue any detailed anomalies
that we were looking for.
And they also may not characterize a localized area
well enough,
localized being like the areas of Manawai
that we are specifically looking at here.
Finally, MODIS and VIIRS,
the two main earth observation products
we were able to use for quantitative analysis,
have a coarse spatial resolution
that is not quite suitable for this scale of analysis
that we were hoping to complete at Manawai.
So we can see this on the left side of the screen.
The pixels for MODIS are quite large
while VIIRS, on the bottom left, are finer,
they're not orthorectified to the specific region.
So as we were really only to example,
sorry, examine oceanographic conditions at large,
rather than at specific survey locations
that we are aware of from the survey that happened in 2019
with the in situ alga presence.
So this brings us to what we can actually say
about the feasibility of this work,
and this work moving forward.
So holistically, we can conclude
that tool itself that we developed
will be a useful tool for our project partners
in part because of the strong match
between MODIS sea surface temperature
confirmed with in situ temperature data.
And also because it will allow managers to utilize the tool
to examine and extract additional oceanographic conditions
at a later time period, without our direct assistance.
However, we cannot say right now
that is possible to decide to this algae directly
with publicly available satellite remote sensing imagery.
And I wanna emphasize the publicly available part of this
as Keo we'll move into some potential work in the future
with privately acquired satellites.
And part of this is because of the corals data
of this public imagery
and also the surprising lack of coverage
over this remote area.
You know, as Gina said,
we did see some elevated chlorophyll-a levels
that might have indicated conditions favorable
for algae spread,
but there were no distinct anomalies
that could reasonably correlate
to the Chondria tumulosa presence.
And so thus there's significant future work
that we identified through this study.
You know, as we stated,
we were not able to perform any direct identification
or classification of the algae with the data at hand,
however our partners, Keo included as well as Fraiola,
Dr. Fraiola and Dr. Martinez,
have access to WorldView data,
which has a much higher spatial resolution.
So future work can include classification of this alga
over the monument using this WorldView data.
Although, the computing power required is not insignificant.
In discussions with other project stakeholders,
we know that Manawai is also prone to catching marine debris
like fishing equipment or shipwreck.
So we do suggest exploring this impact
as a potential agent for algae migration.
And finally, discussions with other scientists
studying the monuments like Dr. Heather Spalding,
led us to consider the thermocline and potential upwelling
where the alga was found.
In what seasons is there more mixing
within the water column?
Is the water temperature a direct driver of the alga?
Studying these anomalies in a more specific scale
that can be detected
with palpably available satellite imagery
is useful future work.
So while this study site is ideal for remote sensing
because it is so difficult to access in person,
there is limited available public imagery.
And what is available has a quite coarse spatial resolution
which is a significant disadvantage
when attempting to track a phenomenon
that occurs at a relatively fine scale.
Our efforts in the 10 weeks of this project
have shown the potential for remote sensing in this region
but also highlighted the challenges
that can come with (indistinct)
We look forward to additional insights
into this nuisance algae studies of Manawai
in the monument progress,
which Keo we'll talk more about
after we acknowledge the project partners
for this part of the NASA DEVELOP project.
We have one poll question
before we move on to acknowledgements and Keo's future work.
-: Last poll all of this very informative
and inspiring presentation.
I'm just in awe of these young scientists, they're amazing.
So our last poll is, what is the western name of Lalo?
French Frigate Shoals,
Pearl and Hermes Atoll,
Midway Atoll,
or Necker Island.
So go ahead and register your vote.
We have about, 25% have voted.
So we'll give it another 10 seconds.
Oh, lots of you, the numbers are climbing.
Yep. We're up to 50%.
So go ahead and register your vote.
I'm gonna close it out in about five seconds.
All right.
And I'm closing up the poll.
So here are our results.
What's the western name of Lalo?
48% has said French Frigate Shoals; is that correct?
-: Yes.
Yes.
Sorry. I was muted for a second.
But yes, that is correct, French Frigate Shoals.
We are definitely promoting
the use of, recognizing Hawaiian native names,
especially in science.
So we wanted to make sure to emphasize these
within our presentation.
Great. So I will move to the acknowledgements
of our partners.
So thank you to Dr. Kauaoa Fraiola
with the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
as well as Dr. Jona Martinez from NOAA.
Our science advisors,
Dr. Juan Torres-Perez and Liane Guild,
offered fantastic feedback and guidance for this project.
And thank you also to Britnay Beaudry,
the fellow and fearless leader (indistinct)
as well as Haley Pippin, our senior fellow.
And this does bring us to What's Next.
You know, as I said,
this is what we accomplished in 10 weeks.
Luckily we had Keo as a team member
and an employee of the monument.
He will be taking what we learned from this project
to move forward on other (indistinct) the monument.
So I'll pass it to Keo briefly,
to talk about the future proposed work
that Keo has recently received money for.
-: I am the lucky one to have worked with you guys
and be employed at the monument,
so I'd like to thank all of you guys.
This might seem to be the end, but it is just the beginning.
2021 is going to be amazing.
I'm gonna start a multipronged remote sensing approach
to the work that I do for school
and try to flow it into the work
that I'm doing at the monument as well.
We're gonna start off this approach with the GEE CORALS tool
that we developed, that developed,
and use that as a spearhead
to monitor ocean conditions remotely
with a quick and easy tool.
Then I will use satellite observation analysis
to continue the work that we have done
under the guidance of,
of...
(indistinct)
-: Yeah, I think he's...
(Andy laughs)
-: Okay. Anybody else
take over this part
before he's back on? -: Ah, sure!
I can talk a little bit about, a little bit about it,
'cause I talked with Keo about it.
In terms of the satellite observation analysis that will,
that he will be looking at,
it will be using this WorldView data that I mentioned
which is has a much higher spatial resolution.
And is also multispectral imagery,
so we can look at specifically the blue, green, red
and near infrared bands and hopefully detect some algae.
And it does look like he's back.
So I will pass it-
-: Oh, that was great interpretation on my slide.
Next (laughs). -: Great.
Hang on.
Did he freeze again?
I do think he froze again.
Okay. I will continue talking about this a little bit.
This is a sample, this imagery here,
is a sample of the potential sites to look at
at the most recent,
most recent trip that actually Dr. Fraiola went on
using this worldly imageries here
to detect some potential sites to survey,
to see if what we're seeing in the satellite imagery
is actually the Chondria tumulosa.
One really cool part of this that Keo is trying to bring in
is an uncrewed aerial system,
basically a drone to collect imagery
at a much finer spatial resolution
and collect this over the sites.
probably just in RGB, red, green, blue bands
just due to the cost constraints
of adding further multispectral imagery.
And then finally with this drone imagery
he will be performing an autoclassification
of the substrate.
There's a couple of different
narrow network approaches to this,
and I think that he was considering
using the naive Bayes classifiers
just basically, to help disseminate pixels
and identify the red algae specifically
with this
new imagery.
Hopefully, he will be back.
I know that he was really promoting 2021
as the year of collaboration between everyone.
You know, I think we felt that
while collaborating with NASA,
but there's a lot of project partners
that he has to thank for funding,
specifically the Office Response and Restoration
for the funding for this most recent project
that Keo will be working on with his PhD.
And of course, NOAA, NOAA Fisheries
and the National Marine Sanctuaries.
With that I'm gonna conclude,
I don't know if he will be back to offer more conclusions
but (indistinct)
that is the end of what we have to present to you all.
So thank you so much for tuning in.
-: Fantastic.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
And you guys win the award
for being a cross-trained multi-disciplinary team,
pick up while your other team members go off
into cyber oblivion (laughs).
We don't know what happened to Keo.
Hopefully, there wasn't another one of those missile,
missile strikes (indistinct)
and they gave us a false missile alert (laughs).
Anyway, we do have a few questions for you.
And Justin and I will...
Why don't you start with the first question, Justin.
And I will look at the list and (indistinct)
-: Great.
Well, here's a technical one for you.
Are there any factors that affect reliability of data
such as turbidity or ocean conditions encores,
are there limits to the data collected?
-: I will say, definitely yes.
Clouds is a huge one and that's really the biggest limit.
If you're using the tool
there's a lot of automatic clown masking
that happens in processing of the data,
so clouds are a big deal,
especially when you're looking at shallow coastal areas
and ocean areas,
as you would see it in the tool,
turbidity and kind of even some of the reflectants
from the bottom surface can affect the reflections
hence the mask that Jamie Gove mentioned
or that Ginah mentioned that Jamie had talked to us about.
And
yeah, there's definitely some limitations here
as there are with pretty much any application
of remote sensing imagery.
We're really excited though, about Sentinel-6,
the newest satellite that launched
that can provide some more ocean focused
remote sensing imagery.
-: Great. Thank you.
Several folks, just kind of have questions around the same,
the same question.
So the tool, I know is being still cleared with NASA IT,
but when that will be available,
will it be on this NASA DEVELOP
Applied Science Program page?
Where can people find the tool when it will be available?
-: So if I'm not mistaken, and there's small chance I am,
the tool will be sent to the project partners
'cause it is made for the project partners.
And it is at their discretion to share it as they wish
because technically we did make it, you know,
for NASA but also for them.
They have the ability to like, you know, share it around
or have other people utilize and look at it,
but it's not being posted on any direct NASA website.
All that will be posted is, I believe,
pictures from our project and a brief project summary
for what we've done.
And if you do a little bit of digging,
you might be able to find the technical (mumbles)
but not a whole lot with those notes
other than a little snapshot of what we did.
-: Okay, great.
Yeah. Related to that question
was another one from Leon Gershwin.
Are there any partnerships
to enlist citizen science efforts?
You know, something like NimoNet, he suggested.
but that kind of relates to the tool being available
but any in the response to citizen science partnerships?
-: Keo, do you wanna take that?
I mean, I suppose I can, if you want.
-: I wasn't sure if I was in internet (indistinct)
(indistinct chattering)
I'm hot-spotted in.
(team laughing)
Yeah. There's currently no plans
for direct community science efforts yet.
I'll probably schedule a meeting with Dr. Juan Torres-Perez
and
the creator of NemoNet
in early January
to help guide me on some projects that I'm working with.
So we could probably discuss some citizen science work then.
-: Great.
-: We actually have Dr. Juan Torres-Perez on
as an audience member.
He says he can help with that answer.
I don't know if I should unmute him
or if we should have that later.
-: Yeah.
-: Okay. Why don't you guys take another question first
and I will track him down-
-: Okay.
So there are several questions related to the algae itself
and you know it's a,
oh, so this is particularly related in mortality.
So the coral mortality,
is the mortality due to smothering, shading
or a bioactive compounds from the algae?
-: Currently, it looks like a physical killing of the coral
by shading and smothering.
I believe that Dr. Heather Spalding and her team
are looking into more biological
aspects of this particular species.
Just like to remind the audience
that this species was just recently described
in science a few months ago.
-: Yeah.
-: Okay. I just unmuted Dr. Torres-Perez.
-: Hi guys. Can you hear me?
Team: Yes.
-: Hi. This is the (indistinct)
science advisor for this project.
I was one of the co-eyes for the Mnemonic Project
in particular that I really,
most of you guys familiarized with.
Yes. There's actually some data from Hawaii
that's incorporated into the Mnemonic platform already.
I believe some of it might
or might not contain some of these areas
but we did submit our proposal to the,
to the NASA Ocean Biology and Biochemistry Project Program
as a follow up for this one.
Unfortunately, we didn't get it from them.
The idea was to actually collect
additional 2D and and 3D data
to incorporate into the Mnemonic platform
particularly for the, for the monument.
But we are actually looking into what the reviewers said
about the proposal,
and I'm seeing if we can submit it to a different program,
either within NASA or NOAA or any other agency,
because we are definitely,
at Mnemonic, we are definitely very, very interested
in incorporating data for the monument
and eventually make it available to the public.
-: Great. Thank you.
Okay. I'll ask one last question
because I think this is important for people to understand,
you know, people, some folks have asked, you know,
how do we get rid of this,
kill off this nuisance algae?
And I think that gets into the Shades of Gray
of invasive species challenges there overall,
but if any of you want to reflect on that,
that'll be interesting.
-: I mean, I can briefly say that
Keo is definitely more of the expert on the algae
in terms of our group prospects.
But we're hoping that this tool itself
can perhaps shed light
on what might have been
causing the algae to actually like,
proliferate in the first place.
You know, I understand the issue is rising sea temperature.
You know, not too much that we can do to that
besides combating climate change as a whole.
I like Keo to talk a little bit more,
I think, about the algae itself.
-: I just consider myself a foot soldier on the ground.
That's I'm trying to just track this algae
and its process is in and how far it's spread.
And I'll leave that decision making
to the MMB, the Management Board of the Monument
and the decision makers.
(Andy chuckles)
-: I do have something to add.
From the footages that we've seen of the algae,
it grows in like these really thick blanket mats
and they really detach very easily
and can get caught in your hair and in your gear.
So there is that issue that they can disperse very easily,
so it's kind of a delicate situation
of getting people in and out
to kind of do anything about the algae.
So they're still trying to learn more about it
because it's still new,
but right now it can disperse really easily,
which is very concerning.
So yeah, just wanted to add-
-: Yeah. Thank you for that.
So that is all the time we have for questions.
Thank you so much, analysts for your presentation.
It's absolutely fascinating
and it's really interesting work
that's being done in the satellites
and what we can look at in the Papahanaumokuakea.
The Hawaiian archipelago
is the most remote archipelago on earth.
And that part of it, Papahanaumokuakea,
is the most remote part of the remote,
most remote archipelago on earth.
So it's always challenging understanding
and seeing what's going on up there.
And this is a really great advance in that.
And we look forward to more work on that.
But for those of you who we couldn't get to your questions
we do capture all the questions
and we get answers from the panelists
and we will send that back out to everybody
after, in about a couple of weeks.
Also this webinar will be online.
The recording will be archived on that URL
you're seeing on your screen right now.
And you will also get a certificate of attendance for this
for professional development,
one hour of professional development
for all those who attend.
We'll be sending them out in a couple of days.
And we also have some cool upcoming webinars.
So this one is on January 7th.
It's He Huliko'a Kanaloa, seeking the depths of Kanaloa
and Hawaiian religious understandings of the ocean
by Jane Lokomaika'Ikeakua Au,
program director for the non-profit Aina Momona
on the island of Molokai.
So that should be a really interesting talk
on January 7th,
you can register to that in the link below.
And also
we do, please fill out the short survey
after you close out your present,
after you close out of the webinar,
because we do wanna hear from you
on what you think and what we can do better,
and include in future presentations.
So mahalo for attending.
Mahalo for all the participants.
Everybody have a safe and happy holiday season.
And let's all hope that 2021 will be a better year (laughs)
than this one.
But we really appreciate you attending.
Take care. Aloha mahalo.
-: Bye bye. Thank you.
(indistinct)
-: All right. Mahalo.