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As space-based research goes, SeaWiFS (Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor) merges the best parts of cost effective planning with the brightest, most focused scientific goals. When launched in 1997, the instrument promised to significantly improve on the historical successes of its predecessor, the Costal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS), while leveraging the economic benefits of simultaneously providing valuable commercial data to international clients. Manifested as the only instrument on the low cost, low power SeaStar satellite, the instrument proved once again that a tightly defined, rigorously followed set of mission goals can deliver valuable data on spec and on budget. This tenth year anniversary of the instrument and the wealth of information it’s gathered about life on Earth provides experts an opportunity to consider the profound implications of its findings.




Panelists



Michael Behrenfeld is currently a professor at Oregon State University and previously a senior research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Behrenfeld’s research employs satellite ocean color data, including SeaWiFS, to understand broad-scale processes in marine algae and their relationship to climate variability. Behrenfeld's research covers topics ranging from basic physiological processes in algae, to the way they respond to changing environmental conditions.





Paul G. Falkowski is a Board of Governors’ Professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and the Department of Geology at Rutgers University. He is also the acting director of the Rutgers Energy Institute. Paul is on the Executive Committee of the NASA SeaWiFS Science Team and led the Ocean Productivity Modeling group. His research interests include biophysics, photosynthesis, photobiology, molecular evolution, signal transduction, apoptosis, biogeochemical cycles and symbiosis. He was named a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 1992, has been a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union since 2001 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2002. He recently became a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 papers that have been published in peer-reviewed journals and books, and has co-invented and patented a fluorosensing system that is capable of measuring phytoplankton photosynthetic rates non-destructively and in real time. Photo credit: Rutgers University





Gene Carl Feldman has been an oceanographer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center since 1985. He has been involved with the production and distribution of satellite-derived ocean color data sets, first from the Nimbus-7 Coastal Zone Color Scanner, for SeaWiFS which launched in 1997 and more recently for the MODIS instruments on AQUA and TERRA spacecraft. Feldman is part of the Ocean Color Group at NASA/Goddard, which is responsible for the collection, processing, and distribution of ocean color data from NASA's instruments. Feldman has been interested in documenting how the Earth is changing and monitoring the biological consequences of that change and to see how the things that we do, and how natural variability, affect the Earth's ability to support life.





Marlon Lewis is the chairman, chief executive officer and chief scientist of Satlantic Incorporated and a professor in the Department of Oceanography at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. His oceanographic research interests span a broad range from upper ocean physics to biological processes to the ocean's role in global climate. Lewis was formerly a program officer at NASA Headquarters, responsible for ocean color research and the SeaWiFS program. He holds adjunct appointments at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, and the Ocean University of China. Lewis has published over 120 peer-reviewed scientific publications and serves on numerous advisory councils to organizations and governments in Canada, the United States, Europe, Japan and Asia.





James Yoder, Vice President for Academic Programs and Dean at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), is a biological oceanographer using satellite sensors, including SeaWiFS, to study the relationship between physical and biological processes in ocean margin and open ocean waters. Yoder has served as a researcher, professor and as director of the Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C., from 2001 to 2004. He also worked at NASA Headquarters in Washington before joining WHOI.

Michael Starobin
Goddard Space Flight Center