Tiit Kutser

In September 2001 I participated in SPIE (The International Society of Optical Engineering) annual remote sensing conference. The conference was divided into 11 sub-conferences dealing with remote sensing of clouds, atmosphere, ocean, sea ice as well as remote sensing applications for agriculture, ecosystems, environmental monitoring, hydrology, geology, and GIS. There were also special conferences on new sensors and techniques. I was chairing the Ocean Color Remote Sensing and Applications session in Remote Sensing of Oceans and Sea Ice conference. I also presented a paper: “Preparations for remote sensing applications on the Great Barrier Reef: Spectral discrimination of coral reef benthic communities

” (co-authors Arnold Dekker and William Skirving). The paper will be published in Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4544.

There were about 300 participants in the conference. Unfortunately the conference suffered from September 11 events in USA and many papers were withdrawn. Few interesting papers and posters were also missing from the Remote Sensing of the Oceans and Sea Ice conference: one about Hyperion applications in coastal waters and two about remote sensing of coral reefs. Hopefully the papers will be published in the proceedings despite the authors were not able to attend the conference.

Nevertheless there were interesting and useful presentations in the conference that ignited discussions about bio-optical modelling, remote sensing methods and monitoring of coral reef health by means of optical remote sensing. Especially fruitful were discussions with Charles Bostater from Florida Institute of Technology and Ron Abileah from SRI International.