Since this Friday is Earth Day and April is Earth Month, today’s post celebrates an important, but unsung hero of our Earth’s ecosystem: green slime. The Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view-Sensor or SeaWiFS is an instrument that was carried on the OrbView-2 spacecraft and sent data to scientists about phytoplankton and algae in Earth’s bodies of water.In the early 1990s, Mary Cleave, a member of NASA astronaut corps, viewed different shades and colors of ocean water during time spent in low-Earth orbit. From space, these different blues and greens are much more visible. Floating bits of plant life tell scientists a lot about the biological life, both on a planet’s land and water surfaces.
The large dark blue areas of ocean represent zones that are free of chlorophyll and the green spots show scientists these regions are “highly productive.” Using this type of technology allows scientists to identify different problems that could have negative effects on our ecosystem, such as the red areas of the Chesapeake Bay, where phytoplankton and algae have sort of taken over and exist at possibly harmful levels.
Looking at the map, can you see the brown patches? These stand for areas in the west that are arid and dry, where the dark green places are thick forests and grasslands. Can you spot where you live on the map? Is it somewhere green or is it brown? Maybe you live near the coastline where the algae are growing.
After 13 years of collecting data, the SeaWiFS stopped communicating with its data stations and was declared unrecoverable, but the information it collected during that time is very valuable to scientists and will help them understand more about our Earth and its ever-changing ecosystem.
{1st image via Flickr Creative Commons, 2nd image via NASA}
