Sciences and Exploration Directorate

Lachlan I.W. McKinna

(Research Oceanographer)

Lachlan I.W. McKinna's Contact Card & Information.
Email: lachlan.i.mckinna@nasa.gov
Org Code: 616
Address:
NASA/GSFC
Mail Code 616.2
Greenbelt, MD 20771
Employer: Go2Q PTY LTD

Brief Bio


Dr McKinna currently works for SAIC and supports ocean color science at the Ocean Ecology Laboratory (OEL), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). He holds a Bachelor of Science (Mathematics and Physics), a Bachelor of Science Honours (Statistics), and a Doctor of Philosophy (Physics) all from James Cook University, Australia. Dr McKinna has worked with in the OEL since 2014. His research focuses on developing state-of-ther-art ocean-color algorithms and implementing them within NASA's freely available ocean color processing software, SeaDAS.

Previously, Dr McKinna was based at Curtin Univesrity, Australia where he developed an algorithm for deriving water-column optical properties in the Great Barrier Reef. In addition, he investigated uses of Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) data for mapping seagrass meadows in the Shark Bay World Heritage Area. During his gradauate program at James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, he explored new approaches for detecting blooms of the marine cyanobacteria Trichodesmium. He also developed approaches for mapping river flood plumes in the Great Barrier Reef using MODIS imagery.

Research Interests


Ocean color algorithm development

Earth Science: Remote Sensing

Marine radiative transfer, inelastic scattering, optically shallow water, bio-optics, hyperspectral and multispectral passive visble sensors, remote sensing coral reefs, ocean biology and biogeochemistry

Positions/Employment


Oceaographer / Software Engineer

SAIC - Goddard Space Flight Center

March 2015 - Present


Adjunct Research Fellow

College of Science & Engineering, James Cook University - Australia

June 2017 - Present


Postdoctoral Fellow

NASA Postdoctoral Program - Goddard Space Flight Center

January 2014 - March 2015


Postdoctoral Fellow

Curtin University - Remote Sensing & Satellite Research Group, Perth, Australia

January 2011 - December 2013

Education


2012 - PhD, James Cook University, Australia
Dissertation title:  "Optical Detection and Quantification of Trichodesmium spp. within the Great Barrier Reef"

2007 - BSc (Hons), James Cook University, Australia
Dissertation title: "Investigating the Application of 2-D Discrete Wavelet Transform for Feature Extraction of Sea Surface Temperature Data used in a Seasonal Rainfall Prediction Model"

2006 - BSc (Mathematics & Physics), James Cook University, Australia

Current Projects


Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Mission


Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)


Second Generation Global Imager (SGLI) on GCOM-C

Publications


Refereed

2017. "From toes to top-of-atmosphere: Fowler’s Sneaker Depth index of water clarity for the Chesapeake Bay." Optics Express 25 (8): A361 [10.1364/oe.25.00a361] [Journal Article/Letter]

2016. "Implementation of an analytical Raman scattering correction for satellite ocean-color processing." Opt. Express 24 (14): A1123--A1137 [10.1364/OE.24.0A1123] [Journal Article/Letter]

2015. "Bottom Reflectance in Ocean Color Satellite Remote Sensing for Coral Reef Environments." Remote Sensing 7 (12): 16756-16777 [10.3390/rs71215852] [Journal Article/Letter]

2015. "A semianalytical ocean color inversion algorithm with explicit water column depth and substrate reflectance parameterization." Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans 120 (3): 1741-1770 [10.1002/ 2014JC010224] [Journal Article/Letter]

2015. "Three decades of ocean-color remote-sensing Trichodesmium spp. in the World’s oceans: A review." Progress in Oceanography 131 177-199 [10.1016/j.pocean.2014.12.013] [Journal Article/Letter]

2014. "Detecting trend and seasonal changes in bathymetry derived from HICO imagery: A case study of Shark Bay, Western Australia." Remote Sensing of Environment 147 186–205 [10.1016/j.rse.2014.03.010] [Journal Article/Letter]

2014. "Improving the optimization solution for a semi-analytical shallow water inversion model in the presence of spectrally correlated noise." Limnology and Oceanography: Methods 12 (10): 651--669 [10.4319/lom.2014.12.651] [Journal Article/Letter]

2012. "Monitoring and mapping of flood plumes in the Great Barrier Reef based on in situ and remote sensing observations." Environmental Remote Sensing and Systems 147-188 [Article in Book]

2012. "Digitise this! A quick and easy remote sensing method to monitor the daily extent of dredge plumes." PLoS One 7 (12): e51668 [10.1371/journal.pone.0051668] [Journal Article/Letter]

2012. "Inter-annual variability of wet season freshwater plume extent into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon based on satellite coastal ocean colour observations." Marine Pollution Bulletin 65 (4): 210-233 [10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.02.022] [Journal Article/Letter]

2012. "Mapping the pollutants in surface riverine flood plume waters in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia." Marine Pollution Bulletin 65 (4): 224-235 [10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.03.001] [Journal Article/Letter]

2011. "Seasonal Climate Prediction for the Australian Sugar Industry Using Data Mining Techniques." Knowledge-Oriented Applications in Data Mining [10.5772/13904] [Article in Book]

2011. "A simple, binary classification algorithm for the detection of Trichodesmium spp. within the Great Barrier Reef using MODIS imagery." Limnology and Oceanography: Methods 9 (2): 50-66 [10.4319/lom.2011.9.50] [Journal Article/Letter]

2010. "Importance of wave-induced bed liquefaction in the fine sediment budget of Cleveland Bay, Great Barrier Reef." Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 89 (2): 154-162 [10.1016/j.ecss.2010.06.009] [Journal Article/Letter]

2010. "On the surface circulation in the western Coral Sea and residence times in the Great Barrier Reef." Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 115 (C6): [10.1029/2009JC005761] [Journal Article/Letter]

2009. "Feature selection in the wavelet domain: adaptive wavelets." Comprehensive Chemometrics: chemical and biochemical data analysis 3 647-679 [10.1016/B978-044452701-1.00033-8] [Book]

Other Professional Information


Extended publication list on Google Scholar Profile: scholar.google.com/citations

Professional Societies


American Geophysical Union

Regular Member

2009 - Present


The Oceanography Society

Regular Member

2017 - Present