Picture: Hagai Nativ
Dynamics of jellyfish swarms
Jellyfish are ubiquitous gelatinous predators that have important consequences for human livelihood, marine ecosystem structure and functioning, and marine biogeochemical cycles. Integrating data from airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drones) and in-situ measurements we quantify motions and spatial characteristics of the jellyfish Rhopilema nomadica along the Israeli coast of the Eastern Mediterranean, linking swimming behavior at the scale of the individual jellyfish to spatial patterning at the scale of the jellyfish swarm.
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Impact of submesoscale currents on the ecology of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea
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The Eastern Mediterranean (EM) is an ultra-oligotrophic sea, in which biological production is limited by the availability of nutrient at the upper part of the water column. As in other oligtrophic basins, the EM is characterized by winter phytoplankton blooms, which coincide with the seasonal intensification of submesoscale (~1-10km) currents. We integrate information from high resolution satellite data and numerical models to study the impact of the submesoscale circulation on different aspects of EM ecology, including dynamics of phytoplankton blooms, and connectivity between coastal and pelagic waters.
Lagrangian study of fine-scale biophysical interactions.
In the marine environment, distant from the coast and from the seabed, there is no obvious spatially fixed reference frame for describing the dynamics of the planktonic organisms inhabiting it. Thus, a natural perspective for studying plankton dynamics is to follow the trajectories of water parcels in which the organisms are embedded. This kind of Lagrangian approach is being used in our lab to study various interactions between plankton and their environment.
The Ocean-science Data Integration Initiative (ODINI).
The ability to comprehensively utilize the huge amount of available ocean data is currently hindered by the difficulty to integrate different datasets, which is largely done in a time and labor intensive manual manner. The Ocean-science Data INtegration initiative (ODINI) is aimed at addressing this challenge by resolving key missing tools and methods currently limiting the automation of the ocean data integration process, covering its three main phases: discover, merge, and evaluate.
Drone-based remote sensing of marine systems.
We are developing tools for acquisition and analysis of very high resolution remote sensing observations of the marine environment from cameras mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drones).
Spatial patterning in marine and terrestrial systems.
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Spatial patterns in complex systems often reflect discernible interactions between the system's components. We explore spatial characteristics of remotely-sensed variables over multiple scales (a few meters to thousands of km), with the goal of discerning the governing processes underlying the formation of the observed variability patterns.
Spatiotemporal changes in Israel's nearshore environment and inland water bodies.
We combine observations from multiple remote sensing platforms and long-term time-series to quantify spatiotemporal changes in different areas along the Israeli coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea, and in inland water bodies as the Sea of Galilee and small water reservoirs.