Remote Sensing Monitoring Phytoplankton Blooming in Qingdao Sea Area by MODIS

In June 2008, a phytoplankton blooming (PB) has occurred in the sea around the city of Qingdao, Shandong province. The blooming phytoplankton is Enteromorpha clathrata (Roth) Greville. The area phytoplankton covered has reached hundreds of square kilometers. Because the sailing race water of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games was affected, media around the world paid attention to this PB. PB does not influence the quality of sea water or oceanic environment directly. However, if the phytoplankton accumulated along the coach can’t be removed immediately, it would die and decay. As the result, the odour would volatilize and decay material would pollute the coach. The technology of remote sensing monitoring has many advantages in monitoring phytoplankton blooming and distribution, such as large scale covering, dynamic monitoring and speediness. MODIS data is a kind of remote sensing data resource with 250m, 500m and 1000 m resolution and 2330 km width. It can cover Qingdao sea area twice every day. Based on classical NDVI index, the author of this article monitored the PB’s distribution and floating route by remote sensing continuously, and analyzed the PB’s source, occurrence and development. The information obtained by remote sensing is of great benefit for government for decision-making. This application gives us a good example of using remote sensing technology to monitor large scale environmental disaster such as PB. The technology of remote sensing will be very useful in environmental monitoring enterprise.