3 ms·

The image description calls it "gold shading", I don't think there's anything to indicate it's an actual picture of kelp.

• neolog 6y ago
  "Satellite Imagery Shows ..." -- if the satellite imagery showed something, why doesn't the graphic show it, instead of some yellow dots overlaid on satellite imagery?
  • lanternfish 6y ago
    Because it might not show the answer to a human? In their methods they say that they employed a technique called multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis which looks to me to be a probabilistic model which performs well over a large data set, like the one they draw from. It's not just a single image they use, but a bunch, each with small spectra differences which indicate areas of cover. EDIT: Their methods also say that `Bull kelp forests are readily identified by multiple existing high spatial resolution satellite and airborne platforms because their floating surface canopies have strong reflectance in the near-infrared, similar to terrestrial vegetation`, so you wouldn't be able to see the difference anyways.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • enriquto 6y ago
      > because their floating surface canopies have strong reflectance in the near-infrared, similar to terrestrial vegetation`, so you wouldn't be able to see the difference anyways. This is not true. You can certainly look at the near infrared channel of an image (it is just a regular gray-scale image anyway) and see right away the vegetation.
  • knowaveragejoe 6y ago
    Are you looking at the paper or the image in the article?