Here you can consult our current and archived news
 Images from https://solace2020.net, © 2021 SOLACE and from https://mnf.csiro.au |
||
| SOLACE voyage successfully completed! R/V Investigator back in Hobart on 16th January 2021 |
||
| January 2021 On 4th December 2020, RSSRG's Research Scientist Charlotte Robinson embarked on the CSIRO research vessel Investigator for the 6-week SOLACE research voyage in the Souther Ocean. SOLACE stands for Southern Ocean Large Areal Carbon Export. This project is led by ARC Laureate Fellow Pr. Philip Boyd from University of Tasmania. A reduced contigent was onboard because of the Covid19 situation, yet the voyage could fullfil most of the initial objectives, including the full suite of optical measurements that RSSRG was in charge of. The general aim of the voyage is to develop an approach to quantify the changing effectiveness of CO2 sequestration by the biological pump that can be implemented using remote-sensing of the ocean surface by satellites and it’s interior by autonomous vehicles (especially BGC-Argo autonomous profiling floats). Read more here Back to top of page |
||
 |
 |
 Image from http://getfarming.com.au/ |
||||
| A new staff member joins RSSRG | New RSSRG success with the ARC discovery scheme |
A new project on application of satellite ocean colour to the Oysters Aquaculture |
||||
| November 2020 Dr Eriita Jones has joined RSSRG as a part-time Research Fellow, working on a project funded by the Western Australian Satellite Technology and Applications Consortium (WASTAC) Small Grants Scheme. The project is going to look at the connection between Land Use Land Cover (LULC) and water quality in Estuaries of Western Australia, using satellite remote sensing. It includes collaboration with the WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) Get to know Eriita a bit more here |
November 2020 RSSRG has been awarded an ARC Discovery project (2021 round, D. Antoine lead CI), entitled Why ocean deserts matter: Phytoplankton carbon and productivity in oligotrophic waters of the Indian Ocean. This project will analyse data collected during our 2019 research voyage on R/V Investigator, with the main objective of reassessing the role of oligotrophic oceans in the global ocean carbon cycle More soon on our web pages. See here |
December 2020 RSSRG has been awarded a project by the SmartSAT Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) (lead CI D. Antoine). This is a pilot project that is going to explore the potential of satellite ocean colour remote sensing in helping the oysters aquaculture Industry to identify potential future sites for growth of their activity, and for monitoring in real time the water quality on the farming sites Read more about SmartSAT here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| A bundle of RSSRG's grants! | RSSRG wins an IMOS "New Technology Proving" grant |
A PhD grant available to work with us | ||||
| June 2020 RSSRG members have won 3 grants from the recent WASTAC small grant call. One project is about remote sensing of flowers in WA related to honey harvesting (lead P. Fearns/T. Campbell), another one about cloud climatologies for Australia (lead M. Lynch) and still another one about the links between land use and land cover (LULC) and water quality in WA estuaries. Read more here for the LULC project Read more here for the Bee's research Read more here for the cloud climatology project |
July 2020 RSSRG got selected for funding as part of the IMOS 2020 "New Technology Proving" call. The funded project is named Seamless and future-proof satellite ocean colour data for Australia, and is about generation of multi-sensor gridded ocean colour satellite products for Australia seas More soon on our web pages. IMOS website here |
August 2020 RSSRG proposes a PhD project on mapping phytoplankton functional types in the seas around Australia. The selected candidate would get a Curtin scholarship to do this work as part of RSSRG's activities Hurry up!! deadline for application is 1st September Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| Bee's and remote sensing | RSSRG part of a winning bid to the ARC Special Research initiative on Excellence in Antarctic Research | Measurement uncertainties and Monte Carlo methods | ||||
| April 2020 Tristan Campbell, who is close to completing his PhD with Peter Fearns RSSRG, has published a paper in the Remote Sensing journal, where they predict honey harvests in SW of Western Australia using machine learning and remotely-sensed observations. Really innovative stuff! Read more here |
April 2020 RSSRG is part of a large consortium of Australian Universities, research intitutions and international partners in a successful bid to the Australian Research Council's Special Research Initiative (ARC SRI) in Excellence in Antarctic Science, announced by the Minister for Education on 21 April. This project, led by the University of Tasmania, has been awarded $20 million over three years to establish the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, .. Read more here |
April 2020 RSSRG has published an innovative paper in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology (American Meteorological Society), where Monte carlo techniques are used in assessing uncertainties in measurements of under-water radiometric quantities, avoiding approximations normally impairing such assessments when dependencies among multiple sources of uncertainties are ignored Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| IMOS 2020 Annual Planning Meeting, Hobart | Thetis redeployed! | IMOS STAR task team report published | ||||
| March 2020 IMOS has been having planning meetings every year since inception. These meetings are the occasion for the community involved in IMOS to gather, to assess the status of the programme, and to plan for the future. In 2020 the focus was on the strategy refresh that will happen in 2020, and also on improving engagement with IMOS stakeholders This year RSSRG reported on the WA IMOS node activities and on the STAR task team work. Read more here |
March 2020 RSSRG's Thetis profiler has been redeployed off Rottnest island on 5th March 2020, as part of our IMOS satellite ocean colour sub-facility work. The Thetis, which is an instruments package named after a sea nymph in Greek mythology, allows studying the chemical, physical, optical and biogeochemical properties of waters off the West coast of Perth. It also provides field data in support to the validation of international satellite ocean colour missions (e.g., the European Space Agency Sentinel3/OLCI). Read more here |
March 2020 The IMOS community formed a task team who worked in 2018/19 on analysing IMOS data to assess state and trends of Australia's marine environments. The report is now published. RSSRG co-authored 2 chapters on the spatial and seasonal trends in chlorophyll-a and phytoplankton around Australia. Both chapters utilise data products from the NASA MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (Aqua-MODIS) satellite.The chapters of interest can be read and downloaded here and here Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| Highlights from our IMOS-supported activities | ROSACE final presentation, EUMETSAT, 4th December |
JAXA Annual GCOM-C PI meeting, Tokyo, 20-23 January 2020 |
||||
| November 2019 RSSRG has published a number of reports on their IMOS-supported activities, including validation of satellite products, characterisation of optical properties of waters off Western Australia and some other cool stuff using radiative transfer simulations. These activities were carried out as follow-ups of the recommendation from the Radiometry Task Team work that we did in 2016-2017 Read more here |
December 2019 In his role of PI of the BOUSSOLE long-term time series project, D. Antoine led a study funded by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), with the aim of proposing a preliminary design for the future Copernicus System Vicarious Calibration (SVC) infrastructure, to be used for the Sentinel3 missions. The final meeting of the project was held on 4th December in Darmstadt, Germany Read more about Satellite Ocean Colour here |
January 2020 We delivered a presentation on the progress of our activities under JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) funding for the GCOM-C mission. The GCOM-C mission is among JAXA's flagships. It carries the Second-Generation Global ocean colour Imager (S-GLI) We deliver field data to JAXA, which they incorporate into the vicarious calibration of the sensor Read more on S-GLI here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| RSSRG at the 2020 AMSA conference | CEOS Working Group Cal/Val in Perth | New RSSRG staff | ||||
| July 2019 RSSRG actively participated to the 2019 AMSA conference, Fremantle, through a number of presentations and posters and also through being part of the organising committee. Read more here |
July 2019 The calibration/validation Working Group (WGCV) of the International Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) had their 45th meeting in Perth. RSSRG (D. Antoine) reported on satellite ocean colour cal/val activities across the country, on behalf of the Australia's research community being active in this domain Read more here |
November 2019 Kadija Oubelkheir has joined RSSRG as a new Research Associate. Kadija will be responsible for our activities under the IMOS Satellite Ocean Colour sub-facility Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
||
| RSSRG get their feet wet! The 110E-line research voyage was carried out onboard R/V Investigator |
||
| May-June 2019 On 14th May, RSSRG (D. Antoine, C. Robinson and M. Slivkoff) and 30 other scientists boarded the CSIRO research vessel Investigator in Fremantle and embarked on a voyage to the eastern Indian Ocean. There, the research teams spent a month gathering data on the area’s marine ecosystem, to determine its physical and biogeochemical changes and any connections to climate change. Antoine’s project is contributing to the Second International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE-2) – a comprehensive UNESCO science program that’s providing new information about the Indian Ocean’s currents, marine ecosystems and influence on climate. The IIOE-2 is a vital scientific endeavour, given that in the past 50 years the surface layers of the eastern Indian Ocean have warmed by more than a degree. Since it commenced in 2015, the program has enhanced our understanding about heat and mass transport in and around the Indian Ocean, which is vital for predicting climate variability and change. Read more here and here Back to top of page |
||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| Curtin Research & Development Committee Small Grant Awarded to RSSRG | New funding grants to RSSRG, both from IMOS and JAXA | Satellite Remote sensing day at Curtin 30 April 2019 |
||||
| March 2019 Postdoctoral Research Associate Charlotte Robinson has been awarded $29k by the Curtin University Faculty of Science & Engineering Research & Development Committee Small Grants Program to study carbon export potential in the Indian Ocean using advanced Equilibrator Inlet Mass Spectrometer Technology developed by collaborators at Duke University. Read more here |
March 2019 The Japanese space agency (JAXA) has selected our proposal for funding over 2019-2021, which is about calibration/validation activities for their GCOM-C/S-GLI mission IMOS has granted a 3-year contract to RSSRG, who become now an integral part of the IMOS satellite ocean colour sub-facility Read more here |
April 2019 The RSSRG took the initiative to bring together Curtin staff who are active in the satelite remote sensing and Earth observation domains, for a brainstorming day. The goal is to assess the capabilities and to discuss the opportunity to form an interest group in this domain at Curtin Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
| |
 |
 |
||||
| Annual PI meeting for the GCOM-C JAXA mission 21-24 January 2019, Tokyo |
IMOS annual planning meeting and STAR Task team progress meeting 11-14 February 2019, Brisbane |
EDTAS conference, Perth 5-6 March 2019 |
||||
| January 2019 D Antoine delivered a presentation on the progress of our activities under JAXA funding for the GCOM-C mission Read more here |
February 2019 RSSRG participated to the 2019 IMOS annual planning meeting and reported on progress of the work in the frame of the STAR Task team Read more here |
March 2019 The EDTAS conference was organised by Defence, and was a forum to discuss emerging space technologies in a number of domains. RSSRG was invited for their expertise in satellite Earth observation Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| PERTH USASIA In-The-Zone conference 8 October 2018, Perth |
Australia/IMOS BGC-Argo meeting | BOUSSOLE gets 3 more years of support from the European Space Agency | ||||
| October 2018 D Antoine gave a invited presentation at this event, about Making good use of satellite Earth observation for the country’s benefit Read more here |
November 2018 The Australia research community, in particular within IMOS, discussed the implementation of a BGC-Argo float network Read more here on Australia's BGC-Argo |
December 2018 The BOUSSOLE long-term time series (led from RSSRG in collaboration with CNRS, France) is going to continue operations under funding from ESA, at least until 2021, and before transition to Copernicus funding is arranged Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
| |
|
 |
||||
| IMOS future planning meeting, 4-5 September 2018, Melbourne |
NEW IMOS STAR TASK TEAM | New RSSRG members | ||||
| September 2018 The IMOS community gathered for a meeting discussing future planning The RSSRG take an active part in these discussions Read more here |
September 2018 A new "task team" has been set up by IMOS This one is called State and Trends of Australia's oceans Report Task Team. RSSRG is involved in determining long-term trends of chlorophyll around Australia Read more here |
October 2018 Owen Giersch and Helen Chedzey join RSSRG as post-doctoral Research Associates Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| Earth observations for Water-Related Applications, 28-29 March 2018, ANU Canberra | IOCCG SUMMER LECTURE SERIES 2018, VILLEFRANCHE SUR MER, FRANCE | 1st face-to-face meeting of the EOA steering committee, Brisbane | ||||
| March 2018 ANU (Canberra) organised a community workshop around water remote sensing. Objectives were to assess the current state of the art in Australia regarding the use of EO for water-related applications, including water management, economic production, natural hazards and scientific research; to dentify EO investment priorities to meet future data requirements; and to determine where among these priorities Australia appears to have a competitive R&D advantage Read more here |
June/July 2018 RSSRG actively participated to the 2018 IOCCG Summer Lecture Series. The International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group (IOCCG) Summer Lecture Series is dedicated to high-level training in the fundamentals of ocean optics, bio-optics and ocean colour remote sensing. Since 2012, these advanced training courses have taken place every two years during the summer months, and are held at the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche (LOV) in Villefranche-sur-Mer Read more here |
August 2018 D. Antoine participated to the first face-to-face meeting of the EOA steering committee EOA provides a coordinating point for all people in Australia using earth observation data (data derived from images collected using satellite, airborne or any other remote technology platform). Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
|
 |
||||
| ADDITIONAL DEPLOYMENTS OF THE TETHIS PROFILER OFF ROTTNEST ISLAND | 2018 IMOS ANNUAL PLANNING MEETING, HOBART | 23rd IOCCG ANNUAL COMMITTEE MEETING, ROME | ||||
| February 2018 The Tethis profiler was redeployed from 16th February 2018, and actually stayed at sea until 23rd May 2018 Read more here |
February 2018 RSSRG actively participated to the 2018 IMOS annual planning meeting, as done since 2014 Read more here |
March 2018 D. Antoine participated to the 2018 annual IOCCG committee meeting, as past Chair and to report on past and upcoming training activities Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| RSSRG at the AquaFLUO-II workshop in SYDNEY | RSSRG AT THE 2017 WAMSI SCIENCE CONFERENCE | INITIAL DATA FROM THE TETHIS PROFILER | ||||
| December 2017 the AquaFLUO-II followed the chlorophyll fluorescence in aquatic sciences, an international conference held in Nové Hrady in 2007 in the former Czechoslovakia. This conference brings together specialists of plant fluorescence Read more here |
November 2017 RSSRG was involved in a number of WAMSI-funded projects, whose final results were presented at this WAMSI science conference in Perth Read more here |
November 2017 The Tethis profiler, deployed off Rottnest island, has started to generate initial data sets Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| PHYTOPLANKTON AROUND AUSTRALIA, FROM ESA's SENTINEL3-OLCI | RSSRG AT THE AMSA 2017 CONFERENCE | RSSRG AT THE IOCS2017 MEETING | ||||
| September 2017 RSSRG has developed a data processing capability, taking advantage of the availability of the Sentinel3/OLCI Level1 products from the Australia Copernicus data hub Read more here |
July 2017 We were invited to give a talk on remote sensing at the 2017 AMSA conference in Darwin (NT), and also contributed a poster on the IMOS Radiometry task team work Read more here |
May 2017 RSSRG was attending the 3rd International Ocean Color Science Meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, with a number of posters and active participation in the breakout sessions Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| DORJI ET AL. Plos ONE 2017 | ACE EXPEDITION COMPLETED | INITIAL THETIS PROFILER DEPLOYMENT | ||||
| April 2017 One of our recent publications in Plos ONE tells you about the impact of the spatial resolution of satellite remote sensing sensors in the quantification of total suspended sediment concentration Read more here |
March 2017 Nina Schuback and Charlotte Robinson came back from the 3-month Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition to which RSSRG took part. This research voyage was unique and not without some challenges! Read more here |
March 2017 The Thetis profiler system (ARC LIEF grant) has been deployed off Rottnest island for the first time after it was commissionned by the manufacturer in late 2016 Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
|
 |
||||
| ESA's FRM4SOC PROJECT | IMOS 2017 ANNUAL PLANNING MEETING | 22nd IOCCG ANNUAL COMMITTEE MEETING | ||||
| February 2017 The European Space Agency (ESA) has set up the "Fiducial Reference Measurements For Satellite Ocean Color" (FRM4SOC) project in 2016, to which we take part, bringing our expertise in field measurements of optical and radiometric quantities, and our experience in satellite calibration/validation activities Read more here |
January 2017 We took part to the 2017 IMOS Annual planning meeting that was held in Perth, to report on our work with the "Radiometry task Team", and to further our interaction with the IMOS community Read more here |
January 2017 The RSSRG has been involved with the IOCCG for many years, and we were pleased to have the 2017 annual committee meeting in Perth this year Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||||
| JAXA's GCOM-C MISSION 2017 PI MEETING | THE AKADEMIK TRYOSHNYKOV STOPS IN HOBART | VOYAGE PREPARATION ON THE AKADEMIK TRYOSHNYKOV, BREMERHAVEN | ||||
| January 2017 RSSRG is among the few non-Japanese funded PIs for the Japanese GCOM-C mission, whose annual meeting was held in Tokyo in January 2017 Read more here |
January 2017 The ACE expedition Leg1 was completed and the Akademik Tryoshnykov made a stop in Hobart. The RSSRG team was resupplied with the necessary consumables, tools etc... so that they could start the Legs 2 and 3 in optimal conditions Read more here |
November 2016 The Akademik Tryoshnykov spent time in Bremerhaven, Germany, before heading south to start the ACE expedition. The RSSRG team took this occasion to start installing a number of equipment on the ship Read more here Back to top of page |
||||
 |
 |
|||||
| RSSRG GOES TROPPO | THETIS QUALIFICATION DEPLOYMENT | |||||
| November 2016 RSSRG co-led the IMOS "Radiometry Task Team", whose activities included a radiometry inter-comparison exercise carried out at the Lucinda Jetty Coastal Observatory (LJCO) in Queensland Read more here |
November 2016 The Thetis profiler was received from the manufacturer (WET Labs), and a qualification/test deployment was carried out off Rottnest with WET Labs assistance Read more here Back to top of page |
|||||