Hi

I have been tryng to work out what is the best/simplist method for obtaining chl-a data for my study area. I do not know much about remote sensing, however I do know how to use ArcGIS and R. I just need monthly chl-a values for a bay off Sout Africa.

Forgive me if this seems like a simple question that there is already an answer to, but I am rather unfamiliar with all the jargon, and have still not figured out exactly what I need to do to get this information.

Hi Brigitte,

I don't normally use ArcGIS however, I have dabbled with it a little.  I think that to help get MODIS hdf data into ArcGIS you can use a toolbox called the "Marine Geospatial Ecology Toolbox" MGET (there may be similar toolboxes).  Here's the link:http://code.env.duke.edu/projects/mget

Also if you are comfortable using R, then you may want to use the GRASS geostatistical package for R: http://grass.fbk.eu/index.php
Here is a page which talks about importing MODIS hdf datafiles into GRASS: http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/MODIS/

You can access the monthly Chla data from the Ocean Colour Web Level-3 browser: http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi/l3

Good luck with it all.

Cheers, Lachie