Abstract

We present a simple, robust inversion for airborne oceanographic lidar profiles. A linear regression to the logarithm of the return is followed by a perturbation to obtain a backscatter estimate. For typical thin plankton layer examples, errors are expected to be $<10\%$ over 90% of the ocean. The inversion was applied to lidar data off the coast of Florida, where the correlation between lidar backscatter at 5 m and surface chlorophyll concentration from satellite ocean color measurements was 0.92.

© 2017 Optical Society of America

Oceanographic lidar profiles compared with estimates from in situ optical measurements

Jennifer H. Lee, James H. Churnside, Richard D. Marchbanks, Percy L. Donaghay, and James M. Sullivan
Appl. Opt. 52(4) 786-794 (2013)

Lidar extinction-to-backscatter ratio of the ocean

James H. Churnside, James M. Sullivan, and Michael S. Twardowski
Opt. Express 22(15) 18698-18706 (2014)

Vertically- resolved phytoplankton carbon and net primary production from a high spectral resolution lidar

Jennifer A. Schulien, Michael J. Behrenfeld, Johnathan W. Hair, Chris A. Hostetler, and Michael S. Twardowski
Opt. Express 25(12) 13577-13587 (2017)

Polarization effects on oceanographic lidar

James H. Churnside
Opt. Express 16(2) 1196-1207 (2008)

Iterative retrieval method for ocean attenuation profiles measured by airborne lidar

Hang Liu, Peng Chen, Zhihua Mao, and Delu Pan
Appl. Opt. 59(10) C42-C51 (2020)