Working Around the Weather

Read more at NASA Earth Expeditions blog

Understanding our planet and how it functions, as well as the impacts that human activities have on it, requires frequent and extended forays into the field to yield valuable data and observations. The COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) investigation is a prime example. The three-year mission, funded by the NASA Earth Venture Suborbital-2 program, is conducting airborne remote sensing campaigns, along with in-water field validation activities, across four coral reef regions in the western and central Pacific Ocean.

“The objective is to conduct coral reef science at the ecosystem scale to find out the relationship between reef condition and the biogeophysical factors we think impact reefs,” said Eric Hochberg, CORAL principal investigator from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, St. George’s, Bermuda. “With that understanding, we can build models to help scientists, resource managers and politicians gain a new perspective on reef function and better predict how natural and human processes will shape the future of reefs.”

When CORAL traveled to Hawai‘i last month for its second field campaign, it already had nearly a year of the mission under its belt. The Operational Readiness Test (ORT) took place in Hawai‘i last summer and the team completed a successful first field campaign in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef last fall. During both, communications between the airborne and field teams were streamlined, field operations and equipment deployments were tested and refined, and team members gained valuable experience working with both equipment and each other.

Even with years of planning and preparation, however, such ventures are always undertaken with the knowledge that some variables are out of the researchers’ control. For the CORAL team, there was one thing they couldn’t prepare for in Hawai‘i: the weather. Read more