The COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) campaign focused on studying the current health of coral reefs and the effects of pollution on the reefs. CORAL had six deployments in various places, including Australia, Hawaii, the Mariana Islands, and Florida in June - October 2016 and February - May 2017. Airborne instruments observed spectra of light reflected upward toward the instrument from the ocean below, which was then used to identify reef composition (i.e., coral, algae, and sand) and model primary production. CORAL was one of NASA’s Earth Venture Suborbital-2 (EVS-2) projects.
2016-06-06 — 2017-05-28
Great Barrier Reef, Hawaiian Islands, Florida, Mariana Islands, Palau
The Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer (PRISM) is an airborne push-broom spectrometer developed at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). PRISM was designed to help provide the necessary spectral, spatial, and temporal resolution needed to characterize events across coastal zones that satellite observations could not offer. The spectrometer within PRISM operates in the near ultraviolet to near-infrared range (350-1050 nm) to collect imagery across coastal ocean regions. PRISM also consists of a two-channel radiometer that operates in the short wave infrared (1240 and 1640 nm) wavelengths to provide accurate ocean color measurements. It has a high temporal resolution (167 Hz) and can fly below cloud flight altitudes allowing it to resolve spatial features down to 30 cm.
