Satellite Remote Sensing Methods in Biological Oceanography
College or University: Cornell University
Type of degree: Certificate-Bachelors degree required
Brief overview of program: This is a 3-credit intensive training course that runs for 2 weeks each summer. The goal is to teach participants the basic skills needed to work independently to acquire, analyze and visualize data sets derived from a variety of satellite sensors (e.g., SeaWiFS, MODIS-Aqua, MODIS-Terra, AVHRR, SeaWinds and Merged Topex/Jason/ERS1/ERS2).
The course focuses a lot of attention on using the Ocean Color Web Data Server and developing IDL (Research Systems Inc.) programming skills needed to work with satellite image data.
A central feature of the IDL programming effort will involve working with SeaDAS commands from within IDL to batch process large quantities of raw SeaWiFS and MODIS data to obtain high resolution mapped images of chlorophyll and other ocean-color related products.
Background lectures will cover the fundamentals of bio-optics, pigment algorithms, primary production algorithms and, to a lesser extent, the underlying physical principals leading to the measurement of sea surface temperature, ocean wind speed and ocean topography. See the course syllabus link for more details on the topics covered in this course.
The class it typically comprised of about 75% graduate students, 20% post-graduate professionals and 5% undergraduates. Participants come from universities, NOAA/NASA facilities and private companies. There is often fairly strong international representation.
About 80% of past course participants have had no prior programming experience so the programming effort will begin at a basic level. More advanced students, with some prior programming experience, will be given more challenging programming problems from which to learn.
Great effort is made to make the course fun and low-stress while at the same time challenging the participants to learn a very large amount of material in a short amount of time.
Website: Click here for program website
Number of students enrolled in 2007: 14 Where do most of the students go upon graduating or leaving the program?
Continue Education: 90% | Enter Workforce: 10% | Do not know: 0%
For the students that enter the workforce, what are the most common occupations that they pursue with this degree or certificate? Remote sensing/image analysis technician in both private and academic sectors
Description of Facilities: Linux computer lab with 20 machines running IDL and SeaDAS software.
Program Faculty: Bruce Monger Student Support: None available
Program Point of Contact: Bruce Monger
Email: bcm3@cornell.edu Department: Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Institution address: Cornell University
Ithaca,NY 14853 Phone: 607-227-2972
|
