Mini  Raman¹ , Rahul  Rajan¹ , Ajai ²

1. Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad-380015, India
2. ES, CSIR, Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad- 380015, India
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Marine Science, 2016, Vol. 6, No. 50   doi: 10.5376/ijms.2016.06.0050
Received: 18 Sep., 2016    Accepted: 06 Dec., 2016    Published: 09 Dec., 2016

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Raman M., Rajan R., and Ajai, 2016, Identification and Mapping of Ocean Biological Deserts Using Satellite Data,International Journal of Marine Science, 6(50):1-9(doi: 10.5376/ijms.2016.06.0050)

The ability of oceans to sequester large amounts of atmospheric CO₂ through the biological pump has generated considerable interest in formulating strategies towards mitigating the impact of climate change. One such mitigation strategy is the artificial fertilisation of oceanic waters characterised by very low phytoplankton biomass. Regions of ocean that contain low phytoplankton biomass or chlorophyll-concentrations are called as ‘Ocean Biological Deserts’. A primary requirement for conducting fertilisation experiments is the identification of regions that are uniformly low in chlorophyll concentration without any seasonal or interannual variations. This communication reports the identification of uniformly low chlorophyll regions (ocean biological deserts) in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal using satellite derived ocean colour variables that can be considered suitable for artificial enrichment.

Ocean colour; Chlorophyll-a; Ocean biological deserts; Arabian Sea; Bay of Bengal; Artificial fertilisation