Vittorio E. Brando

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute of Marine Science ISMAR

PRISMA is the Italian Space Agency’s first proof-of-concept hyperspectral mission launched in March 2019. The present work aims to evaluate the accuracy of PRISMA’s standard Level 2d (L2d) products in visible and near-infrared (NIR) spectral regions over water bodies. For this assessment, an analytical comparison was performed with in situ water re...

A global in situ data set for validation of ocean colour products from the ESA Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI) is presented. This version of the compilation, starting in 1997, now extends to 2021, which is important for the validation of the most recent satellite optical sensors such as Sentinel 3B OLCI and NOAA-20 VIIRS. The data s...

Hyperspectral remote sensing reflectance (Rrs) derived from PRISMA in the visible and infrared range was evaluated for two inland and coastal water sites using above-water in situ reflectance measurements from autonomous hyper- and multispectral radiometer systems. We compared the Level 2D (L2D) surface reflectance, a standard product distributed b...

The Copernicus Ocean State Report is an annual publication of the Copernicus Marine Service, established in 2014 by the European Commission for Copernicus 1 and renewed in 2021 for Copernicus 2. The report provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art, scientific overview on the current conditions, natural variations, and ongoing changes in the global...

A global in-situ data set for validation of ocean-colour products from the ESA Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI) is presented. This version of the compilation, starting in 1997, now extends to 2021, which is important for the validation of the most recent satellite optical sensors such as Sentinel 3B OLCI and NOAA-20 VIIRS. The data s...

COVID-19 lockdown brought to a drastic reduction of anthropic impacts on the environment worldwide, including the marine-coastal system. Earth-Observation (EO) data have the potential to monitor and diagnose the effects of the lockdown in terms of water quality. Here we connect the dots among some coastal environmental changes that occurred during...

We present a three-step inverse model (3SAA) for estimating the inherent optical properties (IOPs) of surface waters from the remote sensing reflectance spectra, Rrs(λ). The derived IOPs include the total (a(λ)), phytoplankton (aphy(λ)), and colored detrital matter (acdm(λ)), absorption coefficients, and the total (bb(λ)) and particulate (bbp(λ)) b...

A relevant indicator for the eutrophication status in the Baltic Sea is the Chlorophyll-a concentration ( ). Alas, ocean color remote sensing applications to estimate in this brackish basin, characterized by large gradients in salinity and dissolved organic matter, are hampered by its optical complexity and atmospheric correction limits. This study...

This work describes a continuous sampling system that has been designed, implemented, and tested for the acquisition of Inherent Optical Properties (IOPs) during field campaigns. The major challenge of the work was to design and build a flow‐through housing accounting for the complex sensing geometry of the ECO‐VSF3, a backscattering meter, i.e., t...

The Earth-observation based products are in the CoastObs portal: https://coastobs.lizard.net. Login details to the portal will be provided after finalising the CoastObs training materials: https://coastobs.eu/e-training Products in the portal include demonstration products of the following parameters: Basic products: Chl-a Suspended matter Turbi...

Multiple approaches have been used by the Ocean Colour community for validating satellite-derived products using in situ data, with most of them derived from mainly two approaches, one suggested by Bailey and Werdell (2006) (BW06) and one suggested by Zibordi et al. (2009a) (Z09), each with a different set of quality checking and spatiotemporal col...

Accurate habitat mapping methods are urgently required for the monitoring, conservation, and management of blue carbon ecosystems and their associated services. This study focuses on exposed intertidal seagrass meadows, which play a major role in the functioning of nearshore ecosystems. Using Sentinel-2 (S2) data, we demonstrate that satellite remo...

Assessing the oceanic surface layer's optical properties through CALIOP has been one of the reasons of the extension of the CALIOP mission for 3 more years (2018–2020). This is the first work evaluating the potential use of CALIOP for ocean applications at regional scale in mid-latitude regions (i.e. Mediterranean, MED, and Black Sea, BS) and inves...

This study presents a first assessment of the Top-Of-Atmosphere (TOA) radiances measured in the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) wavelengths from PRISMA (PRecursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa), the new hyperspectral satellite sensor of the Italian Space Agency in orbit since March 2019. In particular, the radiometrically calibrated PR...

In the coastal environment the optical properties can vary on temporal scales that are shorter than the near-polar orbiting satellite temporal resolution (~1 image per day), which does not allow capturing most of the coastal optical variability. The objective of this work is to fill the gap between the near-polar orbiting and geostationary sensor t...

The lagoon of Venice has always been affected by the regional geomorphological evolution, anthropogenic stressors and global changes. Different morphological settings and variable biogeophysical conditions characterize this continuously evolving system that rapidly responds to the anthropic impacts. When the lockdown measures were enforced in Italy...

Technical advancements have widened the limits of remote sensing in mapping shallow water benthic habitats and bathymetry over the last decades. On the other hand, the needs of shallow water remote sensing have pushed instrument development. In this manuscript we provide 50-year retrospective of the developments in the field in terms of both instru...

A group of 38 experts specializing in hyperspectral remote-sensing methods for aquatic ecosystems attended an interactive Euromarine Foresight Workshop at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) in Ostend, Belgium, June 4–6, 2019. The objective of this workshop was to develop recommendations for comprehensive, efficient, and effective laboratory and f...

New applications on global-scale plankton retrievals using the CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with orthogonal Polarization) lidar measurements on the CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations) satellite recently suggested that space-based lidars could provide information about the depth distribution of optical scatter...

In frame of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) “FLEXSense Campaign 2018” and the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) project, the Global Ocean Satellite monitoring and marine ecosystem study group (GOS) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) organized the oceanographic cruise “FLEX 2018”. The CNR research vessel “Dallapo...

Several coastal regions on Earth have been increasingly affected by intense, often catastrophic, flash floods that deliver significant amounts of sediment along shorelines. One of the critical questions related to the impact of these impulsive runoffs is “are flash floods more efficient in delivering non-cohesive sandy sediment along the coasts?” H...

Executive summary and recommendations The EU Water Framework Directive 1 (WFD) is an ambitious legislation framework to achieve good ecological and chemical status for all surface waters and good quantitative and chemical status for groundwater by 2027. A total of 111,062 surface waterbodies are presently reported on under the Directive, 46% of whi...

In coastal areas, the concentrations and the optical properties of the water components have a large spatial and temporal variability, due to river discharges and meteo-marine conditions, such as wind, wave and current, and their interaction with shallow water bathymetry. This large temporal variability cannot be captured using the standard Ocean C...

Ocean colour is recognised as an Essential Climate Variable (ECV) by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS); and spectrally-resolved water-leaving radiances (or remote-sensing reflectances) in the visible domain, and chlorophyll-a concentration are identified as required ECV products. Time series of the products at the global scale and at high...

A combination of qualitative and semi-quantitative assessments was used to estimate the relative risk of water quality constituents to Great Barrier Reef ecosystem health from major sources in the Great Barrier Reef catchments, focusing on agricultural land uses. In this assessment, the risk was defined simply as the area of coral reefs and seagras...

Particle scattering is an important process that determines both the light penetration through the water column and water‐leaving light. Backscattering, in combination with absorption, determines the remote‐sensing reflectance that is used in ocean color algorithms. Additionally, the wavelength dependence of the backscattering ratio can be related...

A global compilation of in situ data is useful to evaluate the quality of ocean-colour satellite data records. Here we describe the data compiled for the validation of the ocean-colour products from the ESA Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI). The data were acquired from several sources (including, inter alia, MOBY, BOUSSOLE, AERONET-OC...

Satellite imagery provides evidence of complex mixing dynamics in the coastal zone in front of multiple mouth deltas. One peculiar feature, identified in front of the Po Delta (Italy), consists in warmer water bulges present in some periods in the coastal zone between the river mouths. Such features are evident during both high and low river discha...

The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) provides regular and systematic reference information on the physical and biogeochemical ocean and sea-ice state for the global ocean and the European regional seas. CMEMS serves a wide range of users (more than 15,000 users are now registered to the service) and applications. Observation...

The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) provides regular and systematic reference information on the physical and biogeochemical ocean and sea-ice state for the global ocean and the European regional seas. CMEMS serves a wide range of users (more than 15,000 users are now registered to the service) and applications. Observation...

Evaluation of Sentinel-2 and -3 water quality products over European coastal and transitional waters, including chlorophyll-a, seagrass density, primary productivity, phytoplankton size classes, and harmful algal bloom detection.

Imaging spectrometry of non-oceanic aquatic ecosystems has been in development since the late 1980s when the first airborne hyperspectral sensors were deployed over lakes. Most water quality management applications were, however, developed using multispectral mid-spatial resolution satellites or coarse spatial resolution ocean colour satellites til...

A global compilation of in situ data is useful to evaluate the quality of ocean-colour satellite data records. Here we describe the data compiled for the validation of the ocean-colour products from the ESA Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI). The data were acquired from several sources (including, inter alia, MOBY, BOUSSOLE, AERONET-OC...

The Mediterranean near-real-time multi-sensor processing chain has been set up and is operational in the framework of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). This work describes the main steps operationally performed to enable single ocean colour sensors to enter the multi-sensor processing applied to the Mediterranean Sea by...

Trichodesmium, a filamentous bloom-forming marine cyanobacterium, plays a key role in the biogeochemistry of oligotrophic ocean regions because of the ability to fix nitrogen. Naturally occurring in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), the contribution of Trichodesmium to the nutrient budget may be of the same order as that entering the system via catchme...

Monthly climatology of surface bloom occurrences (%MCIPI) for MCK over the period April 2002-April 2012. (TIF)

Beta GAM evaluating the effect of SST, region, time of year (Julian date) by region, and interannual variability (year) on the extent Trichodesmium blooms when they occur. Significant p-values (α = 0.05) are indicated in bold. (DOCX)

Time-series of monthly median MCI background value, b, for the five subregions (subregions are ordered from north to south). Vertical dashed lines represent 6-month periods for all plots. (TIF)

Monthly climatology of surface bloom occurrences (%MCIPI) for BDK over the period April 2002-April 2012. (TIF)

Monthly climatology of surface bloom occurrences (%MCIPI) for CRN over the period April 2002-April 2012. (TIF)

Bernoulli GAM evaluating the effect of SST, region, time of year (Julian date) by region, and interannual variability (year) on the likelihood of a Trichodesmium bloom occurring. Significant p-values (α = 0.05) are indicated in bold. (DOCX)

MCI_GreatBarrierReef_20022012.csv. (CSV)

Summary of the biological, chemical and physical properties of surface water samples for the five subregions. Based on averaged values from the period 2002 to 2013 for temperature, chlorophyll-a (Chl-a), particulate organic carbon (POC), nitrogen (PN), and phosphate (PP), dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and organic phosphorus (DOP), and total di...

Time-series of monthly averaged valid satellite observations for the five subregions (i.e., not masked by quality flags or other criteria). Subregions are ordered from north to south, and the y-axis scale is uniform for all plots. (TIF)

Monthly climatology of surface bloom occurrences (%MCIPI) for CPY over the period April 2002-April 2012. (TIF)

The Sentinel-2A and 2B Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) offers a specification of potential value toward a number of objectives in remote sensing of coral reefs. Coral reefs represent a unique challenge for remote sensing, being highly heterogeneous at metre scales and occurring at variable depths and water clarity regimes. However, conservation ini...

HELCOM assessment characterises the Baltic Sea as a eutrophicated marine area, which is caused by a combination of anthropogenic over-enrichment and climate change. Nutrient inputs have decreased in the last two decades but no decline in eutrophication effects has been documented with high concentrations of chlorophyll-a still observed every summer...

In the last few decades, phytoplankton biomass has been commonly studied from space. However, satellite analysis of non-algal particles (NAPs), including heterotrophic bacteria and viruses, is relatively recent. In this work, we estimate the backscattering coefficient associated with the NAP fraction that does not covary with chlorophyll based on s...

This work describes the main processing steps operationally performed to enable single ocean colour sensors to enter the multi-sensor chain for the Mediterranean Sea of Ocean Colour Thematic Assembling Centre. Here, the multi-sensor chain takes care of reducing the inter-sensor bias before data from different sensors are merged together. The basin-...

Abstract This paper describes a procedure to perform spatio-temporal analysis of river plume dispersion in prodelta areas by multi-temporal Landsat-8-derived products for identifying zones sensitive to water discharge and for providing geostatistical patterns of turbidity linked to different meteo-marine forcings. In particular, we characterized th...

Total suspended solids (TSS) play a fundamental role in inland waters as different materials including contaminants and pollutants can aggregate to these solids and brought in suspension. This can alter the state of the aquatic ecosystem and the use of freshwater resources. For instance, excessive suspended sediment might condition primary producti...

Many Earth observing sensors have been designed, built and launched with primary objectives of either terrestrial or ocean remote sensing applications. Often the data from these sensors are also used for freshwater, estuarine and coastal water quality observations, bathymetry and benthic mapping. However, such land and ocean specific sensors are no...

The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) provides regular and systematic reference information on the physical state, variability and dynamics of the ocean, ice and marine ecosystems for the global ocean and the European regional seas. CMEMS includes both satellite and in-situ high level products prepared by Thematic Assembly Ce...

Simultaneous information on algal biomass abundance and its assemblage structure may be derived from phytoplankton pigment composition measurements. For that reason the analysis of chlorophyll a (Chl a) and the accessory pigments is receiving growing interest in marine studies and ocean color satellite field. The High Performance Liquid Chromatogra...