Andrew Clive Banks

• M.Sc. UCL & Imperial College, Ph.D. University of Reading
• Principal Researcher at Hellenic Centre for Marine Research

Metal concentrations (Cu, Cr, Ni, Zn, Fe, Mn, Cd, and Pb) in marine indicator species were assessed for the study of metal pollution in the Eastern Ionian Sea during the cold period of the year (December 2018 to February 2019). Limpets and sea urchins were collected from natural populations at seven coastal stations while mussels were transplanted...

This paper aims to assess the relationship between the surface reflectance derived from ground based and aircraft measurements. The parameters of the Rahman–Pinty–Verstraete (RPV) and Ross Thick-LiSparse (RTLS) kernel based bi-directional reflectance distribution functions (BRDF), have been derived using actual measurements of the hemispherical-dir...

Ocean colour measured by satellite-mounted optical sensors is an essential climate variable and is routinely used as a central element in assessing the health and productivity of marine ecosystems and the role of oceans in the global carbon cycle. In order for satellite ocean colour to be trustworthy and used in these and other important environmen...

Abstract The societal benefits of satellite ocean colour include aiding the management of the marine ecosystem, helping understand the role of the ocean ecosystem in climate change, aquaculture, fisheries, coastal zone water quality, and the mapping and monitoring of harmful algal blooms. Ocean colour is also designated as an essential climate vari...

We present the results from Verification of Reference Irradiance and Radiance Sources Laboratory Calibration Experiment Campaign. Ten international laboratories took part in the measurements. The spectral irradiance comparison included the measurements of the 1000 W tungsten halogen filament lamps in the spectral range of 350 nm–900 nm in the pilot...

Since recreational diving activities have increased in recent decades, resulting in additional environmental pressure on the coastal zone, the deployment of artificial reefs as a conservation strategy to divert mass ecotourism from fragile natural reefs has been proposed and realized in many areas of the world. Twelve units of a patented naturoid a...

The European Copernicus programme ensures long-term delivery of high-quality, global satellite ocean colour radiometry (OCR) observations from its Sentinel-3 (S3) satellite series carrying the ocean and land colour instrument (OLCI). In particular, the S3/OLCI provides marine water leaving reflectance and derived products to the Copernicus marine e...

Earth observation data can help us understand and address some of the grand challenges and threats facing us today as a species and as a planet, for example climate change and its impacts and sustainable use of the Earth’s resources. However, in order to have confidence in earth observation data, measurements made at the surface of the Earth, with...

The coastal ocean is one of the most important environments on our planet, home to some of the most bio-diverse and productive ecosystems and providing key input to the livelihood of the majority of human society. It is also a highly dynamic and sensitive environment, particularly susceptible to damage from anthropogenic influences such as pollutio...

This paper reviews the state of the art of protocols for the measurement of downwelling irradiance in the context of Fiducial Reference Measurements (FRM) of water reflectance for satellite validation. The measurement of water reflectance requires the measurement of water-leaving radiance and downwelling irradiance just above water. For the latter,...

FRM4SOC

As part of the Sentinel-2 mission, a Radiometric Uncertainty Tool (RUT) has been recently released to the community. This tool estimates the Sentinel-2 radiometric uncertainty associated with each pixel in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance factor images provided by the European Space Agency (ESA). The use of such information enables users to...

Optical earth observation (EO) satellite sensors generally suffer from drifts and biases relative to their pre-launch calibration, caused by launch and/or time in the space environment. This places a severe limitation on the fundamental reliability and accuracy that can be assigned to satellite derived information, and is particularly critical for...

CAR (Cloud Absorption Radiometer) is a multi-angular and multi-spectral airborne radiometer instrument, whose radiometric and geometric characteristics are well calibrated and adjusted before and after each flight campaign. CAR was built by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in 1984. On 16 May 2008, a CAR flight campaign took plac...

The NE Aegean Sea constitutes a challenging sector of the world ocean in studying optical and biogeochemical properties and processes due to a dynamic frontal regime resulting from the continuous mixing of Black Sea waters (BSW) and waters of Levantine origin (LW), which are characterized by substantially different physical, chemical and biological...

Metrology in Satellite Oceanography

In the framework of the European Copernicus programme, the European Space Agency (ESA) has launched the Sentinel-2 (S2) Earth Observation (EO) mission which provides optical high spatial -resolution imagery over land and coastal areas. As part of this mission, a tool (named S2-RUT, from Sentinel-2 Radiometric Uncertainty Tool) estimates the radiome...

Stray light perturbations are unwanted distortions of the measured spectrum due to the nonideal performance of optical radiometers. Because of this, stray light characterization and correction is essential when accurate radiometric measurements are a necessity. In agreement with such a need, this study focused on stray light correction of hyperspec...

Railroad valley is a spatially homogenous and temporally stable radiometric test site in Nevada, USA. The Remote Sensing Group (RSG) at the University of Arizona have set up an automated monitoring system at the site (RadCaTS) which allows the provision of Top of Atmosphere (TOA) reflectance / radiance of the site without undertaking field work. Th...

Presented at PERSEUS Scientific Conference ‘Integrated Marine Research in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea’

The use of in situ measurements is essential in the validation and evaluation of the algorithms that provide coastal water quality data products from ocean colour satellite remote sensing. Over the past decade, various types of ocean colour algorithms have been developed to deal with the optical complexity of coastal waters. Yet there is a lack of...

In the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean there are large discrepancies between in situ and satellite ocean colour derived chlorophyll concentrations. The quantity that is monitored by ocean colour satellites and that can be used in the estimation of chlorophyll concentration is the remote sensing reflectance, defined as the ratio of the water le...

This report summarises the conclusions of discussions between climate experts and the metrology community (in this context national metrology institutes) held over two days at the National Physical Laboratory in May 2015. The objectives of the workshop and the framework for the discussions were established by leading climate experts including those...

Euphotic zone depth (Zeu) is defined as the depth at which the photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) value is 1% of the surface value. In this work, three approaches were used to estimate Zeu from field data (in the North Aegean Sea): (a) the Chl-approach, where surface chlorophyll-a values were determined via the high performance liquid chroma...

The optical properties of seawater are of great importance for a number of studies, e.g. primary production, pollution etc. The first underwater-multiple sensor platform-optics measurements by HCMR were conducted during the "Inner Saronikos Gulf" project, between June 2010 and March 2012. Initially, irradiance and radiance measurements (45 deg. fro...

The optical properties of seawater are of great importance for a number of studies, e.g. primary production, pollution etc. The first underwater - multiple sensor platform - optics measurements by HCMR were conducted during the "Inner Saronikos Gulf" project, between June 2010 and March 2012. Initially, irradiance and radiance measurements (45 deg....

The complex optical properties of NE Aegean Sea particles were studied in the framework of Perseus and AegeanMarTech projects. Inherent optical properties (IOPs; beam attenuation, optical backscattering, fluorescence) and discrete bottle data (PMC, POC, TChl-a) were measured during October 2013. Black Sea water (BSW) enters into the Aegean Sea from...

The optically complex properties of NE Aegean Sea were studied during the AegeanMarTech project. Simultaneous above and in-water ocean colour measurements were validated with chlorophyll concentration field data and compared against concurrent MODIS images. It was found that the Med-OC3 algorithm outperforms the operational OC3M-547 algorithm and p...

Absorption and attenuation data were collected in the North Aegean Sea during the Perseus and AegeanMarTech cruises using the spectral absorption and attenuation meter AC-S (WETLabs, Inc). Instrument drift, temperature, salinity and scattering corrections were applied to obtain accurate results. Negative absorption and attenuation coefficient value...

A compilation of 15 years field data of chlorophyll-a from the Aegean Sea are compared for the first time with respective remote sensing chlorophyll a matchups, using the MODIS-Aqua products and the OC3M-547 MODIS operational algorithm, along the trophic N-S gradients of the Aegean Sea. This is a small part of a coordinated study of the optical pro...

The use of in situ measurements is essential in the validation and evaluation of the algorithms that provide coastal water quality data products from ocean colour satellite remote sensing. Over the past decade, various types of ocean colour algorithms have been developed to deal with the optical complexity of coastal waters. Yet there is a lack of...

One of the most important steps in utilizing ocean colour remote-sensing data is subtracting the contribution of the atmosphere from the signal at the satellite to obtain marine water-leaving radiance. To be carried out accurately, this requires clear-sky conditions, i.e. all clouds need to be excluded or masked from the data prior to atmo- spheric...

One of the most important steps in utilizing ocean colour remote sensing data is subtracting the contribution of the atmosphere from the signal at the satellite to obtain marine water leaving radiance. To be done accurately this requires clear sky conditions, i.e. all clouds need to be excluded or masked from the data prior to atmospheric correctio...

During the INSEA project the potential positive role that remote sensing products can play in coastal eutrophica-tion assessment systems using assimilation into coupled hydrodynamic–biogeochemical models has been shown. However, products derived from satellite ocean color data continue to suffer from high levels of inaccu-racy when compared with in...

] We appreciate the chance to present our views on thecomment by Kara and Barron [2008] and contribute to thediscussion that began. The criticism raised by Kara andBarron [2008] focuses onthree issues: The first issue, whichalso draws most of their attention, is the representativenessof the coarse-resolution reanalysis used in our original paper[Ma...

Of all the remote sensing modalities available for underwater applications, acoustic methods, covering frequency ranges from a few Hz to several MHz, are by far the most flexible and widely used. The authors propose a method for preprocessing sidescan sonar data for visualisation, detection and classification purposes. Sidescan imagery is highly se...

In this study we calculate the monthly heat budget of the Red and Black Seas and its components: the net solar and net terrestrial fluxes, the sensible and latent heat fluxes, and the monthly heat content change. A radiation transfer model is employed for the estimation of the net solar and terrestrial energy fluxes, instead of commonly used parame...

Smith, C. J., Banks, A. C., and Papadopoulou, K.-N. 2007. Improving the quantitative estimation of trawling impacts from sidescan-sonar and underwater-video imagery. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 64: 1692–1701. The techniques of sidescan sonar and towed, underwater-video sled were assessed as rapid-assessment methodologies for investigating tra...

An advanced multivariate sequential data assimilation system has been implemented within the framework of the European MFSTEP project to fit a three-dimensional biogeochemical model of the Eastern Mediterranean to satellite chlorophyll data from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS). The physics are described by the Princeton Ocean Mo...

Within the framework of the European MFSTEP project, an advanced multivariate sequential data assimilation system has been implemented to assimilate real chlorophyll data from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) into a three-dimensional biochemical model of the Eastern Mediterranean. The physical ocean is described through the Princ...

We calculate the monthly components of the Mediterranean Sea heat budget, namely the net shortwave, net longwave, latent, sensible heat fluxes, and heat storage change, for years 1984–2000. The radiative components of the seasonal heat budget are derived by a radiation transfer model, while in most other studies bulk formulae are used. A variety of...

The study area is located at the North-East part of the Island of Gavdos, south of Crete. The hydrodynamic regime, due to insignificant tides, is influenced mainly by wind waves and the resulting coastal currents. The wave action is important with heights exceeding 4 m (over 2.5 % in an annual basis) and the most frequent winds are blowing from n...

4 m (ετήσιο ποσοστό >2,5%) ενώ οι συχνότερα πνέοντες άνεµοι είναι οι βόρειοι, οι βορειοδυτικοί και οι δυτικοί. Τα παράκτια ιζήµατα (µέχρι βάθους ~20 m) ανοικτά του φυσικού λιµανιού της Ν. Γαύδου (Καραβέ) είναι γενικά αµµώδους σύστασης µε το 70-80% να είναι χερσογενή και το υπόλοιπο 20-30% βιογενή. Τα υδροδυναµικά δεδοµένα (ταχύτητα και διεύθυνση ρε...

The European Union project 'GAVDOS' (MERTIKAS & PAVLIS, 1999) has been designed to lead to the establishment of a calibration and sea level monitoring site for the JASON-1 and ENVISAT satellites as well as the GLObal Sea level monitoring System (GLOSS). Within the context of this project, nearly ten years of TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite altimetry data...

Radiative transfer modelling for the seasonal energy budget of the Mediterranean Sea.

The location of the GAVDOS facility is under a crossing point of the original ground-tracks of TOPEX/Poseidon and the present ones for Jason-1, and adjacent to an ENVISAT pass, about 50km south of Crete, Greece. Ground observations and altimetry comparisons over cycles 70 to 90, indicate that a preliminary estimate of the absolute measurement bias...

The European Union project 'GAVDOS' (MERTIKAS & PAVLIS, 1999) has been designed to lead to the establishment of a calibration and sea level monitoring site for the JASON-1 and ENVISAT satellites as well as the GLObal Sea level monitoring System (GLOSS). Within the context of this project, nearly ten years of TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite altimetry data...

The European Union project GAVDOS is in the process of establishing a radar altimeter calibration and sea-level monitoring site on the island of Gavdos, Crete. This site is in support of the JASON and ENVISAT satellites and within the context of the European Global Sea-level Monitoring System (EUROGLOSS) initiative. The first sea level measurements...

The possibility of improving the determination of the marine geoid is investigated in the area of the isle of Gavdos, Greece. In the frame of the GAVDOS project, the need of a new high-resolution and high-accuracy geoid model for the calibration of the satellite's (JASON-1, ENVISAT and EURO-GLOSS) altimeters and for sea level monitoring has become...

The isle of Gavdos, situated south of the island of Crete, Greece, has been selected in the framework of the EU project GAVDOS to host absolute sea level monitoring and altimeter calibration facilities due to its offshore location under a crossover point of the Topex/Poseidon and Jason-1. Detailed regional geoid and sea surface topography (SST) mod...

GAVDOS

This article assesses the potentially powerful combination of remotely sensed data and soil-vegetation-atmosphere transfer (SVAT) schemes. SVATS represent the hydrological processes occurring at the land surface and can be used to estimate, among other processes, the exchange of water and energy between the soil, vegetation and the atmosphere. They...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Reading, 2000.

Segmentation can be an important processing technique for the extraction of information from remotely sensed imagery. This research paper presents examples of the application of the MuSIPS system to the segmentation of the new ERS1 AMI SAR imagery of Chott Djerid, S. Tunisia. Before segmentation the imagery was verified using representative field s...