Optical Detection and Assessment of the Harmful Alga, Karenia brevis

Specific objectives of this research include the following: 1) Measurements of inherent and apparent optical properties will be conducted in areas frequented by Karenia brevis bloom events off the west Florida coast, and attempt to identify key optical indices for discriminating blooms of K. brevis from other phytoplankton and other sources of optical variability. 2) We will examine the utility of inversion methods to retrieve phytoplankton absorption from reflectance, and subsequently evaluate this with regard to optical criteria for detection of K. brevis and other phytoplankton taxa.