From Samples to Satellites

The monitoring of phytoplankton, the primary producers, in inland waters has been a bottleneck for environmental observation due to the overwhelming signal coming from the background, especially from humic compounds. Now, new sensor and computing technologies have brought this to a turning point. The goal of this research is to develop a generalizable method for resolving the optical signals of phytoplankton functional groups regardless of the background signal.
Field sampling
This project uses the new research satellites to monitor inland waters. This project is funded by the Research Council of Finland. Researcher Pritish Naik doing measurements with a multiparameter sonde on Lake Vesijärvi as part of the field campaign 2024.

Table of contents

Project duration
-
Core fields of research
Information technology and the human in the knowledge society
Research areas
JYU.Wisdom
Computational Science
Funding
Research Council of Finland

Project description

In oceans, phytoplankton form distinct optical functional groups. Previously, the temporal, spatial and spectral resolution of research satellites has limited similar observations in inland waters, but now this could be changed with the new satellite technology and modelling tools.

In this project, we use new hyperspectral satellites, including EnMAP, PRISMA and Kuva Space satellite constellations. 

We do field work and measurements on lakes in Finland and Scotland to collect ground truth data of optical properties of the lakes. We aim to construct general models to calculate the ground truth variables from the new satellite imagery.

Publications

Publication
2025

Winter Satellite Workshop
Salmi, Pauliina
Naik, Pritish
Beckmann, Daniel Atton
Jiang, Dalin
May, Linda
McKenzie, Rebecca
Olszewska, Justyna
Pölönen, Ilkka
Hunter, Peter
Publication
2025

Journal of the Royal Society Interface
Riihiaho, Kimmo A.
Lind, Leevi
Calderini, Marco L.
Halonen, Vilho
Pölönen, Ilkka
Salmi, Pauliina
Publication
2024

Winter Satellite Workshop
Naik, Pritish
Pölönen, Ilkka
Salmi, Pauliina

Project members

Pritish Naik

Pritish Naik

Doctoral Researcher