Bio-optical properties of the different water masses in the Gulf of St. Lawrence

The St. Lawrence ecosystem is a complex environment influenced by a variety of physical forces (runoff, winds, tides, bathymetry) that sustains a diverse food web going from phytoplankton to whales. Chlorophyll concentration is thus an important variable to measure at the scale of the ecosystem. Because of its large size, remote sensing is the only available tool to measure chlorophyll distribution in the St. Lawrence using ocean color imagery. To fully utilize this type of data, it is however important to have a sound knowledge of the bio-optical properties of the different water masses in the system. A St. Lawrence SeaWiFS program was thus built to gather this knowledge beginning in 1997.