Chapter 17
Some Reflections on Thirty-Five Years of Ocean
Color Remote Sensing
Howard R. Gordon
17.1 Some Historical Milestones
In the first 15 or so years of my 35-year involvement in ocean color remote sensing,
I was fortunate to have witnessed and participated in much of the early development
of this enterprise. In this paper I relate those that had a significant impact on the
subject and on my own work, and try to describe the historical setting in which they
took place. These were very exciting and sometimes trying times for the members
of the CZCS Experiment Team. I hope I can convey some of that excitement and
frustration, and along the way, a few details about the subject.
My ocean color initiation was in the early 1970s when I started investigating
radiative transfer in natural waters with Otis Brown (then a graduate student), when I
supervised the Ph. D dissertation of George Maul on the application of LANDSAT-1
imagery to optical oceanography, and when I tried (and failed) to make in-situ optical measurements in support of an aircraft experiment by Fabian Poulson (ERIM)
to try to remotely measure bathymetry. The latter failure showed me the difficulty
of validation exercises in support of remote sensing. Although ocean optics has a
considerable history, I shall describe only the events that occurred during, or had
an influence on, my own involvement with ocean color remote sensing. A more
complete history of events leading up to the Coastal Zone Color Scanner’s (CZCS)
approval for flight by NASA is given by Austin (1992), and a comprehensive history
of ocean color remote sensing is presently being prepared by Jim Acker.
My first contact with ocean optics was in late 1967, when I moved to the
University of Miami. Most of what I learned about the subject in my first 2
years there came from Jerlov’s book Optical Oceanography (1968) and from Jerzy
Dera, who visited from the fall of 1967 to the summer of 1968. Reading Optical
Oceanography now, one realizes that ocean color was barely on the horizon at
that time.
H.R. Gordon (B)
Department of Physics, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA
e-mail: gordon@physics.miami.edu
289
V. Barale et al. (eds.), Oceanography from Space,
DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8681-5_17, C
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Some Reflections on Thirty-Five Years of Ocean
Color Remote Sensing
Howard R. Gordon
17.1 Some Historical Milestones
In the first 15 or so years of my 35-year involvement in ocean color remote sensing,
I was fortunate to have witnessed and participated in much of the early development
of this enterprise. In this paper I relate those that had a significant impact on the
subject and on my own work, and try to describe the historical setting in which they
took place. These were very exciting and sometimes trying times for the members
of the CZCS Experiment Team. I hope I can convey some of that excitement and
frustration, and along the way, a few details about the subject.
My ocean color initiation was in the early 1970s when I started investigating
radiative transfer in natural waters with Otis Brown (then a graduate student), when I
supervised the Ph. D dissertation of George Maul on the application of LANDSAT-1
imagery to optical oceanography, and when I tried (and failed) to make in-situ optical measurements in support of an aircraft experiment by Fabian Poulson (ERIM)
to try to remotely measure bathymetry. The latter failure showed me the difficulty
of validation exercises in support of remote sensing. Although ocean optics has a
considerable history, I shall describe only the events that occurred during, or had
an influence on, my own involvement with ocean color remote sensing. A more
complete history of events leading up to the Coastal Zone Color Scanner’s (CZCS)
approval for flight by NASA is given by Austin (1992), and a comprehensive history
of ocean color remote sensing is presently being prepared by Jim Acker.
My first contact with ocean optics was in late 1967, when I moved to the
University of Miami. Most of what I learned about the subject in my first 2
years there came from Jerlov’s book Optical Oceanography (1968) and from Jerzy
Dera, who visited from the fall of 1967 to the summer of 1968. Reading Optical
Oceanography now, one realizes that ocean color was barely on the horizon at
that time.
H.R. Gordon (B)
Department of Physics, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA
e-mail: gordon@physics.miami.edu
289
V. Barale et al. (eds.), Oceanography from Space,
DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8681-5_17, C
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010