Sargassum podcast Ep 49: Dr. Geoff Smith and Dr. Betsabe de la Barreda Bautista " SATELLITES, SARGASSUM, AND CARIBBEAN COASTLINES "

The Sargassum Podcast

Part of the problem with sargassum’s sudden proliferation is hard to track. Things like weather, currents, and even marine animals can make it challenging to understand where a sargassum beaching will occur and how big it might be when it does. Dr. Geoff Smith and Dr. Betsabe de la Barreda Bautista have a great solution: they’ve created a service that archives photos from satellites to create a working, updated map of the sargassum movement. Dr. Geoff Smith has a strong background in the fundamental interactions of radiation with vegetation and other surface materials. He has applied this knowledge in developing prototype systems to measure and monitor surface properties, with a particular focus on land cover. He has worked in academia, government research, and the private sector with links to UK, European and international organizations. Dr. Betsabe is an observational earth scientist who uses GIS and statistics to understand the environment. Her main research interests include vegetation response to climate events using remotely captured data, understanding how ecosystem productivity is linked to environmental conditions, and assessing vegetation condition and land cover change over time.

You can find their incredible project at http://sasams.org/

University of Nottingham https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/Specto Natura Ltd http://www.specto-natura.co.uk/Hybrid Geospatial Ltd https://www.hybrid-geospatial.com/Centro de Investigación en Ciencias de Información Geoespacial, (CentroGeo) https://www.centrogeo.org.mx/Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, National Autonomous University of Mexico, (UNAM) https://www.icmyl.unam.mx/Planet Labs Inc. https://www.planet.com/ UK Space Agency https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/uk-space-agency .