Phytoplankton optical fingerprint libraries for development of phytoplankton ocean color satellite products

Quantifying changes in phytoplankton communities using ocean color is
essential for predicting ocean food resources, occurrences of harmful
algal blooms, and carbon and other elemental cycles, among other
predictions.  Here we present a dataset of greater than fifty
strains of phytoplankton, from a range of taxonomic lineages, geographic
locations, and time in culture, alone and in mixtures, grown to
exponential and/or stationary phase for determination of hyperspectral
UV-VIS absorption coefficients, multi-angle and multi-spectral backscatter
coefficients, volume scattering functions, particle size distributions,
fluorescence, and hyperspectral remote sensing reflectance.  The
measurements obtained from these experiments are valuable to facilitate
development of new global and/or regional ocean color models by the
broader scientific community.