VANCOUVER — Scientists are using new photographs from space to help them study Columbia River sediment.
An imaging system that uses a scanner aboard the International Space Station is exploring coastal regions from a viewpoint 200 miles above the Earth, according to the Columbian newspaper. The images contain more data and have a finer resolution, which will give scientists a much closer look at such complex coastal systems as estuaries, where rivers flow into oceans.
That’s why the Columbia River is part of the demonstration phase for the project, said Curt Davis, an Oregon State University oceanographer and the project scientist. “It has been a good test location for us,” he added.
His team has been working with a research center at Oregon Health & Science University that studies the Columbia River from Bonneville Dam to the coast.
Columbia River water that flows into the Pacific — the river’s plume — contains suspended sediments, clays, phytoplankton, nutrients and dissolved organic material, Davis said. The Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean scanning system can gather and transmit the data required to get detailed information about that mix.
“With all the information in HICO, we can sort it out,” he said. It will then be compared with analyses of water samples, Davis said.
It can reveal near-shore eddies, currents, and the influence of coastal streams entering the ocean. Imagery also will help scientists monitor events like oil spills and analyze effects of climate change.
Researchers also have taken a few images of Puget Sound, but that Northwest water feature is not a focus of the project.
“We’re not having much luck there getting images, because of clouds,” Davis said.
The images from space have 10 times the resolution of previous technology. A photo of the mouth of the Columbia River, taken from 200 miles up, is sharp enough to show cargo ships and the Astoria-Megler Bridge.
The imaging system, developed by the Naval Research Laboratory, was transported to the space station in September 2009 on a Japanese rocket and is housed on a “space porch” attached to Japan’s science lab.
And now, Japan has become a timely subject for research.
“We hope to begin imaging the area around Sendai,” Davis said, to learn what they can about the area devastated by the recent earthquake and tsunami.
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