OCxSPMcor Chlorophyll-a OC-CCI Data in the Bay of Fundy, 1997-Present

Chlorophyll-a concentration (Chl-a) is used as a proxy for phytoplankton biomass to track blooms and monitor the state of the ecosystem. This dataset is made of daily 1-km resolution images containing satellite Chl-a values computed using the OCxSPM-cor algorithm, covering the period from Sep 1997 to present day over the Bay of Fundy (43.1-46.2°N, 63.1-68.8°W). Regionally-tuned coefficients for OCxSPM-cor Chl-a (Wilson et al., 2024, see resources) were obtained by matching satellite pixels to in situ Turner fluorometry Chl-a samples within the region of interest. OCxSPM-cor Chl-a optimization used a linear regression of OCxSPM-cor against Turner that was forced to the 1:1 line to reduce the negative bias observed in higher concentrations in the default global Chl-a models. Daily Chl-a images were generated by applying the optimized OCxSPM-cor algorithm on level-3 binned remote sensing reflectance (Rrs) data from the OC-CCI multisensor product generated by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) as part of the European Space Agency (ESA) climate change initiative. The Chl-a data were then projected onto an Equidistant Cylindrical grid (1x1 km per pixel) using a nearest neighbour method. This model and the coefficients computed for the Northwest Atlantic and Bay of Fundy are available in the R package oceancolouR (https://github.com/BIO-RSG/oceancolouR).