Alexis Cruz completed his first undergraduate research in geo-optics of Mayaguez Bay

After more than 20 years of research in Mayaguez Bay this open bay in the western side of Puerto Rico is moving GERS Lab work toward a better understanding of the dynamics of minerals in the suspended sediments. This was the topic of Alexis Cruz Benitez, an undergraduate student of the Geology Department, whom successfully presented the project called “Spectral Effect Of Minerals In Sediments Of Mayagüez Bay” during this semester final presentations of all students registered in undergraduate research. Alexis’ presented his work on December 9, 2008, which focused on the spectral response of minerals in suspended sediments from Añasco, Yagüez and Guanajibo rivers. He compared samples from three stations (Dentro, Boca and Playa) at each river. Water samples were collected in September 21 and September 26, 2008. Remote Sensing Reflectance (Rrs) was obtained using the GER-1500 spectroradiometer. A laboratory procedure was also developed and tested. The results will help to develop other studies in Mayaguez Bay and will provide recommendations for remote sensing applications.

See Alexis' final report >

Multiple defenses of graduate students working in ocean optics and remote sensing

At the end of this fall semester of 2008 four graduate students from the Marine Science Department successfully defended their thesis. Marcos Rosado-Torres (worked in Mayaguez Bay), Deborah Cedeño-Maldonado (worked in La Pargera Bioluminescence Bay), and María Vega-Rodriguez (worked in La Parguera Keys) were supervised by Dr. Roy Armstrong and conducted projects related with ocean optics and remote sensing of coastal waters. Ramón López worked with the bio-optical dynamics of eddies in the Eastern Caribbean Sea and his advisor was Dr. José M. López. All these projects were linked with current research in the GERS Lab and Dr. Fernando Gilbes was part of their thesis committees. Specific details of each project can be found in the table below.

The following Ph.D. desertations and M.S. thesis were sucessfully completed this semester:

Student	Degree	Defence Date	Title	pdf File
Marcos A. Rosado-Torres	Ph.D.	November 26	Evaluation And Development Of Bio-Optical Algorithms For Chlorophyll Retrieval In Western Puerto Rico
Ramón López-Rosado	Ph.D.	November 26	Photosynthetic Efficiency Of Phototrophic Plankton And Bio-Optical Variability As Influenced By Mesoscale Processes In The Eastern Caribbean Basin
Deborah J. Cedeño Maldonado	Ph.D.	December 2	Spectral Properties And Population Dynamics Of The Harmful Dinoflagellate Cochlodinium Polykrikoides (Margalef) In Southwestern Puerto Rico
María Vega Rodríguez	M.S.	December 3	Estimating Primary Productivity Of Red Mangroves In Southwestern Puerto Rico From Remote Sensing And Field Measurements

Research of Mayaguez Bay is presented in PRYSIG 2008

The Center for Hemispherical Cooperation in Research and Education in Engineering and Applied Science (CoHemis) celebrated its sixth meeting on Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (PRYSIG, for Spanish) during November 14, 2008. This meeting contained 9 oral presentations and 2 workshops that were attended by people from academia, private sector, and government. One of the presentations was given by Ramón López and Vilmaliz Rodriguez, graduate students supported by our NOAA-CREST project. Their talk was titled “Remote Sensing and Bio-Optical Properties of Mayaguez Bay”, which represented a summary of the most recent efforts for understanding the dynamics of this ecosystem. Once again we are part of this important event, which has become a tradition among this community of technical experts.

Annual Open House of the UPRM Earth Science Week

As in previous years the GERS Lab participated in the annual open house of the Earth Science Week that is traditionally organized in the UPRM by the Puerto Rico Seismic Network and the Department of Geology. This year the activity received over 2,000 students from different schools around the island and took place in the UPRM Gymnasium during October 10, 2008. GERS Lab exhibition included a demonstration of taking reflectance measurements using the GER spectroradiometer. The bio-optical rosette was also shown and its application for remote sensors calibration was explained. Participants had the opportunity of looking a high resolution aerial photography of the UPRM campus and watch diverse images of Earth from space. The exhibition was presented by Ramon Lopez, a Ph.D. student of the Marine Science Department, Yadira Soto, a Master student, and Alexis Cruz, an undergraduate student, both of the Geology Department. The objective was to introduce the innovative research tools of remote sensing and demonstrate their importance to future generations of professionals.

Research from the GERS Lab is presented in the Third Annual Sea Grant College Symposium

The University of Puerto Rico Sea Grant College Program (UPRSGCP) carried out its "Third Annual Symposium for Coastal and Marine Applied Research” during October 8, 2008. This activity brought together researchers who have received grants from UPRSGCP since 2006. The presented projects focus on problems affecting our coastal and marine resources. The presentations emphasized on the applicability of research results. During this symposium two researchers from the GERS Lab showed their projects. Fernando Gilbes talked about “New Web Tool for Understanding Bioluminescent Bays” and Johannes Schellekens about “Developing a Protocol to Use Remote Sensing as a Cost Effective Tool to Monitor Contamination of Mangrove Wetlands”.

Meeting of current students conducting research at the GERS Lab

The students conducting research in the GERS laboratory had their first meeting of the semester during September 11, 2008 in the conference room of the Geology Department. Every student gave a short presentation about the proposed work and listen to comments and suggestions of the other participants. Vilmaliz Rodriguez and Yadira Soto are the current graduate students of Geology conducting their thesis with Fernando Gilbes. Vilmaliz is supported by NOAA-CREST to investigate the “Spatial and Temporal Variations of Suspended Sediments in Mayaguez Bay associated with Landward Soil Erosion Rates”. Yadira is working on “Detecting Shoreline Changes in Puerto Rico Using Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems”. Ramón Lopez, a Ph.D. student of the Marine Science Department, is also supported by NOAA-CREST for the “Development of the On-Line Database of Mayaguez Bay”. Alexis Cruz in conducting his first undergraduate research entitled “Spectral Effect of Minerals in Sediments of Mayaguez Bay”. And Natlee Hernández performed her both undergraduate research in topics related with the “Suspended Sediments of the Mayaguez Bay”. During this past summer Natlee worked at the USGS and she is now considering graduate studies at UPRM-Geology with Fernando Gilbes as advisor. This group will meet again at the end of the semester to present a progress report of their research.

NOAA Centers exchange ideas to collaborate in ocean remote sensing

The application of remote sensing techniques for ocean dynamic studies is a common objective of two very distant NOAA Centers. In Puerto Rico, the coastal component of the Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center (CREST) is using ocean color sensors for the estimation of water quality parameters. In Oregon, the Cooperative Institute for Oceanographic Satellite Studies (CIOSS) uses several techniques, like microwave and ocean color, for remote sensing research and modeling of the ocean. Therefore, to explore the possibility of collaboration, the organizers of the CIOSS 5th Annual Cooperative Research Program (CoRP) Science Symposium invited CREST researchers to participate. This symposium took place August 12-13, 2008 at Gilfillan Auditorium on the Oregon State University (OSU) campus. The theme for the Symposium was “Data-Model Fusion – Use of Satellite Data with in situ Data and Models,” covering everything from simple data-model comparisons to complex data assimilation. Ramón Lopez, a graduate student of UPRM-Marine Sciences Department and working in CREST, presented a poster of his dissertation project about oceanic eddies. In addition, two other graduate students from engineering and working in CREST with non-ocean applications presented their posters. Fernando Gilbes also attended the symposium as part of the invitation from CIOSS Director, Ted Strub. He stayed at OSU an extra day to give the Departmental seminar titled “Challenges and Opportunities of Remote Sensing in Caribbean Coastal Waters” and met several researchers to discuss possible collaborations. This visit has allowed learning more about the interests and current activities of these two NOAA groups and hopefully will open channels for near-future collaborative projects.

See the presentation given by Fernando Gilbes >                  Go to CIOSS Web Page >

Natlee Hernández makes a USGS summer internship

This past summer of 2008 Natlee Hernández worked as Remote Sensing Technician during an internship for the Eastern Geographic Science Center Division in Reston, Virginia, at the National Center of the U.S. Geological Survey. Her supervisor was Dr. John Jones, a Researcher Geographer. She worked in the project called “Calibration of 2005 Imagery in South Florida Everglades” as part of the main project titled “South Florida Landscape Dynamics”. The principal objective of this project is to develop and apply innovative remote sensing and geographic information system techniques to map the distribution of vegetation and related hydrologic variables such as evaporation through space and time. Natlee worked with images from two sensors, MODIS and TM, collected on the Everglades during 2005. As part of her tasks was to create NDVI products, use METRIC and Simplified codes to get evapotranspiration outputs for TM atmospherically corrected and compare them with the uncorrected imagery. MODIS imagery was downloaded, the coordinates were changed to UTM and a same geographic subset for TM imagery was created. Her results showed that the Empirical Line atmospheric correction method was effective for the TM imagery. “This internship was a great experience because I learned other ways to use the Remote Sensing Technique” she described it.

See Natlee's presentation >

Remote sensing of climate change in the Puerto Rico Weather Camp 2008

As part of our collaboration with the Bio-Optical Oceanography Laboratory (BIOL) Fernando Gilbes was invited to give a talk about Remote Sensing of Climate Change during the Puerto Rico Weather Camp 2008. His presentation took place in the planetarium of the Physics Department of UPRM on July 17 and over 15 high school students listened to him. Yasmin Detres, researcher at BIOL, was the coordinator in UPRM of this annual event organized by the NOAA Center for Atmospheric Science (NCAS). This year camp also received the collaboration of the Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Program of UPRM and the Meteorological Society of Puerto Rico-Student Chapter. Students were engaged in hands-on activities, field experiments, seminars, tours of research facilities, and workshops that expand their knowledge of atmospheric sciences, weather and forecast models, and environmental instrumentation.

See the presentation >

Medtronic in Puerto Rico gets interested in renewal energy

Medtronic was founded in 1949 by Earl E. Bakken and the late Palmer J. Hermundslie. Since developing the first wearable external cardiac pacemaker in 1957 and manufacturing the first reliable long-term implantable pacing system in 1960, Medtronic has been the world's leading producer of pacing technology. Today, Medtronic is the world's leading medical technology company, providing lifelong solutions for people with chronic disease. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, their operations are primarily focused on providing therapeutic, diagnostic, and monitoring systems for cardiovascular, neurological, diabetes, spinal, and ear, nose and throat markets. Medtronic opened manufacturing facilities in Puerto Rico by the end of the 1970s and recently their operations in Villalba have been expanded. As many other companies in Puerto Rico, the office of safety and security from Medtronic in Villalba celebrated their annual environmental fair during June 25, 2008. This year they got interested in renewal energy and invited Fernando Gilbes for a lecture in this topic. During that day he talked about diverse ways of generating energy with water, a revised version of the same lecture he has been offering in different places.

See the presentation >

Undergraduate research is presented to the Geology Faculty

Ivelisse Lopez and Natlee Hernandez successfully defended their undergraduate research during May 8, 2008. Ivelisse in her second research project used a Geographic Information System (GIS) to assess the risk of a earthquake in Mayaguez city. She used two equations based on different rationale and created two risk maps that were analyzed. The resulting maps identified areas of Mayagüez at different risk zones and clearly show that the coastal area is at more risk than the mountainous area. The whole city of Mayagüez and particularly the urban areas should be studied in more detail using additional GIS coverage layers for the city such as liquefaction hazard maps or tsunami hazard maps. On the other hand, Natlee in her also second research project analyzed the grain size, composition and spectral response of deposited sediments in Mayagüez Bay. The grain size distribution demonstrated that the offshore stations have grains with lower diameter than the inshore stations. The composition of the grains shows more carbonates on Añasco River and more terrigenous in Yagüez River. Along the three rivers was showed the lack of organic matter. These results helped to better understand the dynamics of suspended sediments in Mayagüez Bay and provided recommendations for future application of remote sensing in this region.

See Ivelisse Lopez report

See Natlee Hernandez report

Lecture about energy produced with water is presented in San Juan

Fernando Gilbes has been involved in several initiatives of renewal energy as part of his work in CoHemis.That is why he has prepared a 45 minutes presentation on how to produce energy with water. As oceanographer, Fernando has also started a collaboration that aims to test a new invention to generate energy with waves. Since the potential of generating energy with water in Puerto Rico, including waves, is enormous several people and groups have invited Fernando to give his lecture, which is titled "Diversas Maneras De Generar Energia Con Agua En El Planeta". The most recent appearance occurred in San Juan during May 2 of 2008 as part of an international conference of renewal energy.

See the presentation >

Research from Mayagüez Bay is presented in Sigma Xi poster day

As in previous years, students from the GERS Lab presented at the Sigma Xi poster day. The activity took place during April 10, 2008 at UPRM-Chemistry Building and this year two posters were presented by Natlee Hernandez and Vilmaliz Rodriguez. They both presented their work performed in Mayagüez Bay. Natlee's poster summarized her undergraduate research and it was titled "Grain Size, Composition and Spectral Response of Deposited Sediments in Mayagüez Bay". The poster prepared by Vilmaliz included part of her master thesis and it was titled "Developing A Method To Monitor Sedimentation Processes In Mayagüez Bay Using MODIS Data".

See Natlee Poster >

See Vilmaliz Poster >

Monthly CenSSIS samplings continue producing unique optical data of coral reefs

The application of remote sensing techniques to the study of coral reefs is still limited by the lack of knowledge of the dynamics of the water optical properties. In order to remove the water column from the remote signal and study the bottom conditions in a coral reef is necessary to understand the spatial and temporal variability of IOP's and AOP's. This is the main objective of the most recent effort of our component in the CenSSIS project. Monthly sampling of bio-optical properties are carrying out in La Parguera reef system along 6 different stations. The most recent sampling was performed during March 26, 2008 and the students of the graduate course CMOF 8446 (Oceanographic Remote Sensing II) participated. The bio-optical rosette and the GER-1500 spectroradiometer were deployed from the Boriken boat.

Fernando Gilbes gives a lecture of water optical properties in a marine sciences course

Fernando Gilbes and Roy Armstrong have a long time collaboration of research and education. They are both working with optical properties and remote sensing. As part of this collaboration Fernando gave the lecture titled "Relationship between the inherent and apparent optical properties" in Roy's graduate course CMOF 8446 (Oceanographic Remote Sensing II) during March 24, 2008. The lecture reviewed important topics already covered in the course and presented new ones very important for the application of remote sensing in environmental studies.

See the presentation >

Sampling in Mayagüez Bay is performed as part of a marine sciences course

During March 12, 2008 a bio-optical sampling in Mayagüez Bay was carried out as a teaching experience of the graduate course CMOF 8446 (Oceanographic Remote Sensing II), given by Dr. Roy Armstrong in the Department of Marine Sciences. The students had the opportunity to deploy the bio-optical rosette, make measurements with the GER-1500 spectroradiometer, and collect water samples for Chlorophyll-a, suspended sediments, and CDOM analyses. The sampling also provided data of the dry season conditions in the Bay that will be incorporated in the long-term database that has been analyzed as part of the NOAA-CREST project of Dr. Fernando Gilbes. In addition, the cruise allowed to collect samples of the bottom sediments at different sites of the Bay as part of the project performed by Natlee Hernandez, an undergraduate student of the Department of Geology and working under supervision of Dr. Gilbes.

Suspended sediments research is presented in the 2008 Geology Symposium

One of the main research areas of our NOAA-CREST project is to develop a procedure to estimate suspended sediments in Mayaguez Bay using remote sensing. This effort has involved several undergraduate and graduate students that have been testing several sensors and algorithms. The results of this work were presented during the 24th Annual Symposium of Caribbean Geology that was held in the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez on February 29, 2008. This symposium was organized by the UPRM-Department of Geology and dedicated to the geologist Wayne Jolly, whom past away last month. The talk was titled "Monitoring suspended sediments in Mayaguez Bay using remote sensing" and given by Fernando Gilbes. Other authors of this work were Vilmaliz Rodriguez, Jose Martinez, and Eidalia Gonzalez.

See the presentation >

ACEER Conference presents how to obtain energy from water

During the past year ACEER (Alianza Ciudadana para la Educación en Energía Renovable) has organized conferences of renewable energy in the Cultural Center of the Mayaguez City. The main purpose of these conferences is to provide the most current information about this topic to the general public in order to help our island moving toward these technologies. ACEER had the 5th conference during February 23 of 2008 about energy from water and invited Fernando Gilbes to give a talk. The presentation was titled "Diversas Maneras de Generar Energía con Agua en el Planeta" which exposed the diverse methods and most recent technology of getting energy with this renewable source.

See the presentation >           Go to ACEER Web page >

MODIS validation in Mayaguez Bay is presented during the 2008 NOAA-CREST Symposium

Ocean color of Mayaguez Bay has been part of the research efforts made by the GERS Lab since its foundation. In most recent years the work has focused on testing and validating the MODIS sensor. The results of such work were presented during this year NOAA-CREST Symposium that was held in the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez on February 21, 2008. The presentation given by Fernando Gilbes was titled "MODIS Validation for Water Quality Parameters in Mayagüez Bay" and presented image processing and analyses that clearly demonstrated how MODIS is not the most appropriate ocean color sensor for Mayagüez Bay. Another sensor with better temporal, spatial, and spectral resolutions is still needed for the estimation of Chl-a and suspended sediments in tropical coastal waters. The work also suggests that future work with MODIS in this region must improve the atmospheric correction, consider other sources of error like bottom and land signal, and removes contamination by CDOM. Other authors of this work were William Hernandez, Vilmaliz Rodriguez, Jose Martinez and Natlee Hernandez.

Read the abstract >           See the presentation >