Invited Speakers

Hervé Claustre received his Ph.D. in 1987 in Oceanography at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Laboratoire d'Ecologie du Plancton Marin, Villefranche/mer, France. After a 3-year post-doctoral position at Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie Marines (LPCM) and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (U.K), he was recruited as a CNRS-permanent scientist at the Villefranche-sur-mer lab in October 1990. He spent a one-year sabbatical at Dr. Prézelin’s lab (UCSB) in 1995-1996. His research interests include phytoplankton ecology and marine biogeochemical cycles focusing on the use of phytoplankton pigments and optical properties. Over the past four years, he has become deeply involved in instrumentation projects linked to the development of bio-optical gliders and profiling floats. Hervé was the project leader of two important cruises dedicated to biogeochemistry and bio-optics: the PROSOPE cruise in 1999 in the Mediterranean Sea and the BIOSOPE (BIOgeochemistry and Optics South Pacific Experiment) cruise in 2004. He presently serves as chairman for the IOCCG working group BIO-ARGO “Bio-optical Sensors on Argo Floats”.

Abstract

BIO-OPTICAL PROFILING FLOATS AND GLIDERS AS NEW OBSERVATIONAL TOOLS

Claustre, Hervé - CNRS, Laboratoire d'océanographie de Villefranche, 06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

Autonomous platforms like profiling floats and gliders are relatively mature technologies. Their large potential for research in physical oceanography (dramatic increase in observation density) is now clearly asserted in the context of global ocean observation programs like ARGO. In parallel with the emergence of these technologies, the field of miniature, low power bio-optical and biogeochemical sensors is rapidly evolving. Over recent years the bio-optical community has benefited from the increase in observational capacities by developing platforms that allow the measurement of key bio-optical and subsequently biogeochemical variables (i.e. Chla, backscattering coefficient, a proxy of Particulate Organic Carbon in open ocean waters) autonomously and with a high sampling frequency. It is now possible to monitor such variables with the same spatial and temporal resolution as physical variables. This is a prerequisite for making significant improvements in our understanding of biogeochemical responses to physical forcing on space and time scales ranging from the sub-mesoscale to basin scale or from the diurnal scale to seasonal scale. Additionally, thanks to recent algorithmic improvements, new optical products (e.g. backscattering coefficient, absorption by colored dissolved material) are at present extracted from ocean color. In the near future, the very likely intensification of autonomous in situ bio-optical measurements will permit the elaboration of unique bio-optical 3D / 4 D climatologies, linking surface (remotely detected) properties to their vertical distribution (measured by autonomous platforms), from which new research topics will be developed.