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Large-scale ecosystem restoration projects seldom undergo comprehensive evaluation to determine project effectiveness. Consequently, there are missed opportunities for learning and strategy refinement. Before our study, monitoring information from California’s middle Sacramento River had not been synthesized, despite restoration having been ongoing since 1989. Our assessment was based on the development and application of 36 quantitative ecological indicators. These indicators were used to characterize the status of terrestrial and floodplain resources (e.g., flora and fauna), channel dynamics (e.g., planform, geomorphology), and the flow regime. Indicators were also associated with specific goal statements of the CALFED Ecosystem Restoration Program. A collective weight of evidence approach was used to assess restoration success. Our synthesis demonstrates good progress in the restoration of riparian habitats, birds and other wildlife, but not in restoration of streamflows and geomorphic processes. For example, from 1999 to 2007, there was a > 600% increase in forest patch core size, and a 43% increase in the area of the river bordered by natural habitat > 500 m wide. Species richness of landbirds and beetles increased at restoration sites, as did detections of bats. However, degraded post-Shasta Dam streamflow conditions continued. Relative to pre-dam conditions, the average number of years that pass between flows that are sufficient to mobilize the bed, and those that are of sufficient magnitude to inundate the floodplain, increased by over 100%. Trends in geomorphic processes were strongly negative, with increases in the amount of bank hardened with riprap, and decreases in the area of floodplain reworked. Overall the channel simplified, becoming less sinuous with reduced overall channel length. Our progress assessment presents a compelling case for what needs to be done to further advance the ecological restoration of the river. The most important actions to be taken relate to promoting river meander and floodplain connectivity, and restoring components of the natural flow regime.

The article "Chinese Immigrants in the California Supreme Court: The Earliest Civil Cases" by Charles J. McClain examines early civil cases involving Chinese immigrants in California. It discusses a case where the California Supreme Court deemed a state law targeting Chinese immigrants unconstitutional. The article also explores the role of Chinese district associations, or huiguan, in providing support to Chinese immigrants and delves into specific legal cases, including a class-action lawsuit and a property ownership dispute. Additionally, it touches on discriminatory laws that prevented Chinese witnesses from testifying in California courts. The text showcases the Chinese community's engagement with the legal system and their efforts to challenge discriminatory laws through litigation. [Extracted from the article]

Discusses assessment and value-added instruction at Northeast Missouri State University. Argues for a learning-centered assessment orientation. Advocates an institutional "soul-searching" process to determine the most appropriate means to assess institutional effectiveness. (PAA)

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua platform has nine spectral bands with center wavelengths from 412 to 870 nm that are used to produce the standard ocean color data products. Ocean scenes usually contain high contrast due to the presence of bright clouds over dark water. About half of the MODIS Aqua ocean pixels are flagged as spatial stray light contaminated. The MODIS has been characterized for stray light effects prelaunch. In this paper, we derive point-spread functions for the MODIS Aqua ocean bands based on prelaunch line-spread function measurements. The stray light contamination of ocean scenes is evaluated based on artificial test scenes and on-orbit data. OCIS codes: 290.1090, 290.2648, 290.5820, 280.4788, 110.3000.

We describe the development of a new suite of aerosol models for the retrieval of atmospheric and oceanic optical properties from the SeaWiFS and MODIS sensors, including aerosol optical thickness ([tau]), angstrom coefficient ([alpha]), and water-leaving radiance ([L.sub.w]). The new aerosol models are derived from Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) observations and have bimodal lognormal distributions that are narrower than previous models used by the Ocean Biology Processing Group. We analyzed AERONET data over open ocean and coastal regions and found that the seasonal variability in the modal radii, particularly in the coastal region, was related to the relative humidity. These findings were incorporated into the models by making the modal radii, as well as the refractive indices, explicitly dependent on relative humidity. From these findings, we constructed a new suite of aerosol models. We considered eight relative humidity values (30%, 50%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, and 95%) and, for each relative humidity value, we constructed ten distributions by varying the fine-mode fraction from zero to 1. In all, 80 distributions (8Rh x 10 fine-mode fractions) were created to process the satellite data. We also assumed that the coarse-mode particles were nonabsorbing (sea salt) and that all observed absorptions were entirely due to fine-mode particles. The composition of the fine mode was varied to ensure that the new models exhibited the same spectral dependence of single scattering albedo as observed in the AERONET data. The reprocessing of the SeaWiFS data show that, over deep ocean, the average [[tau].sub.865] values retrieved from the new aerosol models was 0.100 [+ or -] 0.004, which was closer to the average AERONET value of 0.086 [+ or -] 0.066 for [[tau].sub.870] for the eight open-ocean sites used in this study. The average [[tau].sub.865] value from the old models was 0.131 [+ or -] 0.005. The comparison of monthly mean aerosol optical thickness retrieved from the SeaWiFS sensor with AERONET data over Bermuda and Wallops Island show very good agreement with one another. In fact, 81% of the data points over Bermuda and 78% of the data points over Wallops Island fall within an uncertainty of [+ or -] 0.02 in optical thickness. As a part of the reprocessing effort of the SeaWiFS data, we also revised the vicarious calibration gain factors, which resulted in significant improvement in angstrom coefficient ([alpha]) retrievals. The average value of a from the new models over Bermuda is 0.841 [+ or -] 0.171, which is in good agreement with the AERONET value of 0.891 [+ or -] 0.211. The average value of a retrieved using old models is 0.394 [+ or -] 0.087, which is significantly lower than the AERONET value. [c] 2010 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 070.4550, 070.6110, 120.5050, 120.6650.

Ocean-color applications require maximum uncertainties in blue-wavelength water-leaving radiances in oligotrophic ocean of approximately 5%. Water-leaving radiances from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite, however, exhibit temporal drift of the order of 15% as well as sensor changes in response versus scan and polarization sensitivity, which cannot be tracked by onboard calibrators. This paper introduces an instrument characterization approach that uses Earth-view data as a calibration source. The approach models the top of the atmosphere signal over ocean that the instrument is expected to measure, including its polarization, with water-leaving radiances coming from another well-calibrated global sensor. The cross calibration allows for significant improvement in derived MODIS Terra ocean-color products, with largest changes in the blue wavelengths. OCIS codes: 010.0280, 010.1690, 010.1285, 010.4450, 280.4788.

The NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group's Calibration and Validation Team has analyzed the mission-long Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) on-orbit gain and detector calibration time series to verify that lunar calibrations, obtained at nonstandard gains and radiance ranges, are valid for Earth data collected at standard gains and typical ocean, cloud, and land radiances. For gain calibrations, a constant voltage injected into the postdetector electronics allows gain ratios to be computed for all four detectors in each band. The on-orbit lunar gain ratio time series show small drifts for the near infrared bands. These drifts are propagated into the ocean color data through the atmospheric correction parameter [member of], which uses the 765/865 nm band ratio. An anomaly analysis of global mean normalized water-leaving radiances at 510 nm shows a small decrease over the mission, while an analysis of [member of] shows a corresponding increase. The drifts in the lunar time series for the 765 and 865 nm bands were corrected. An analysis of the revised water-leaving radiances at 510 nm shows the drift has been eliminated, while an analysis of [member of] shows a reduced drift. For detector calibrations, solar diffuser observations made by the individual detectors in each band allows the response of the detectors to be monitored separately. The mission-long time series of detector calibration data show that the variations in the response of the individual detectors are less than 0.55% over the mission for all bands except the 865 nm band, where the variations are less than 1%. OCIS codes: 280.0280, 010.0010, 010.4450, 120.0120, 120.5630, 120.0280.

The absorption by atmospheric nitrogen dioxide (N[O.sub.2]) gas in the visible has been traditionally neglected in the retrieval of oceanic parameters from satellite measurements. Recent measurements of N[O.sub.2] from spaceborne sensors show that over the Eastern United States the N[O.sub.2] column amount often exceeds 1 Dobson Unit (~2.69 x [10.sup.16] molecules/[cm.sup.2]). Our radiative transfer sensitivity calculations show that under high N[O.sub.2] conditions (~1 x [10.sup.16] molecules/[cm.sup.2]) the error in top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance in the blue channels of the sea-viewing wide field-of-view sensor (SeaWiFS) and moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors is approximately 1%. This translates into approximately 10% error in water-leaving radiance for clear waters and to higher values (>20%) in the coastal areas. We have developed an atmospheric-correction algorithm that allows an accurate retrieval of normalized water-leaving radiances (nLws) in the presence of N[O.sub.2] in the atmosphere. The application of the algorithm to 52 MODIS scenes over the Chesapeake Bay area show a decrease in the frequency of negative nLw estimates in the 412 nm band and an increase in the value of nLws in the same band. For the particular scene reported in this paper, the mean value of nLws in the 412 nm band increased by 17%, which is significant, because for the MODIS sensor the error in nLws attributable to the digitization error in the observed TOA reflectance over case 2 waters is ~2.5%. OCIS codes: 010.1310, 010.4450, 290.1310, 290.4210, 290.5890.

Recent advances in global biogeochemical research demonstrate a critical need for long-term ocean color satellite data records of consistent high quality. To achieve that quality, spaceborne instruments require on-orbit vicarious calibration, where the integrated instrument and atmospheric correction system is adjusted using in situ normalized water-leaving radiances, such as those collected by the marine optical buoy (MOBY). Unfortunately, well-characterized time-series of in situ data are scarce for many historical satellite missions, in particular, the NASA coastal zone color scanner (CZCS) and the ocean color and temperature scanner (OCTS). Ocean surface reflectance models (ORMs) accurately reproduce spectra observed in clear marine waters, using only chlorophyll a ([C.sub.a]) as input, a measurement for which long-term in situ time series exist. Before recalibrating CZCS and OCTS using modeled radiances, however, we evaluate the approach with the Sea-viewing Wide-Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS). Using annual Ca climatologies as input into an ORM, we derive SeaWiFS vicarious gains that differ from the operational MOBY gains by less than [+ or -]0.9% spectrally. In the context of generating decadal Ca climate data records, we quantify the downstream effects of using these modeled gains by generating satellite-to-in situ data product validation statistics for comparison with the operational SeaWiFS results. Finally, we apply these methods to the CZCS and OCTS ocean color time series. OCIS codes: 010.4450, 280.0280, 120.0280, 030.5620.

The retrieval of ocean color radiometry from space-based sensors requires on-orbit vicarious calibration to achieve the level of accuracy desired for quantitative oceanographic applications. The approach developed by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group (OBPG) adjusts the integrated instrument and atmospheric correction system to retrieve normalized water-leaving radiances that are in agreement with ground truth measurements. The method is independent of the satellite sensor or the source of the ground truth data, but it is specific to the atmospheric correction algorithm. The OBPG vicarious calibration approach is described in detail, and results are presented for the operational calibration of SeaWiFS using data from the Marine Optical Buoy (MOBY) and observations of clear-water sites in the South Pacific and southern Indian Ocean. It is shown that the vicarious calibration allows SeaWiFS to reproduce the MOBY radiances and achieve good agreement with radiometric and chlorophyll a measurements from independent in situ sources. We also find that the derived vicarious gains show no significant temporal or geometric dependencies, and that the mission-average calibration reaches stability after ~20-40 high-quality calibration samples. Finally, we demonstrate that the performance of the vicariously calibrated retrieval system is relatively insensitive to the assumptions inherent in our approach. Society of America OCIS codes: 010.0010, 280.0280, 120.0120, 010.4450, 120.5630.

The NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group's Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) team has undertaken an analysis of the mission-long Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) solar calibration time series to assess the long-term degradation of the solar diffuser reflectance over 9 years on orbit. The SeaWiFS diffuser is an aluminum plate coated with YB71 paint. The bidirectional reflectance distribution function of the diffuser was not fully characterized before launch, so the Cal/Val team has implemented a regression of the solar incidence angles and the drift in the node of the satellite's orbit against the diffuser time series to correct for solar incidence angle effects. An exponential function with a time constant of 200 days yields the best fit to the diffuser time series. The decrease in diffuser reflectance over the mission is wavelength dependent, ranging from 9% in the blue (412 nm) to 5% in the red and near infrared (670-865 nm). The Cal/Val team has developed a methodology for computing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for SeaWiFS on orbit from the diffuser time series corrected for both the varying solar incidence angles and the diffuser reflectance degradation. A sensor noise model is used to compare on-orbit SNRs computed for radiances reflected from the diffuser with prelaunch SNRs measured at typical radiances specified for the instrument. To within the uncertainties in the measurements, the SNRs for SeaWiFS have not changed over the mission. The on-orbit performance of the SeaWiFS solar diffuser should offer insight into the long-term on-orbit performance of solar diffusers on other instruments, such as the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer [currently flying on the Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra and Aqua satellites], the Visible and Infrared Radiometer Suite [scheduled to fly on the NASA National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) and NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) satellites] and the Advanced Baseline Imager [scheduled to fly on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Geostationary Environmental Operational Satellite Series R (GOES-R) satellites]. OCIS codes: 280.0280, 120.0280, 230.1980, 010.0010, 120.5630, 120.0120.

Author(s): Michael J. Behrenfeld (corresponding author) [1]; Robert T. O'Malley [1]; David A. Siegel [3]; Charles R. McClain [4]; Jorge L. Sarmiento [5]; Gene C. Feldman [4]; Allen J. Milligan [...]

The polarization correction for the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on the Terra and Aqua satellites is described. The focus is on the prelaunch polarization characterization and on the derivation of polarization correction coefficients for the processing of ocean color data. The effect of the polarization correction is demonstrated. The radiances at the top of the atmosphere need to be corrected by as much as 3.2% in the 412 nm band. The effect on the water-leaving radiances can exceed 50%. The polarization correction produces good agreement of the MODIS Aqua water-leaving radiance time series with data from another, independent satellite-based ocean color sensor, the Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS). OCIS codes: 260.5430, 120.5800, 280.0280, 010.0010.

The Sea-Viewing Wide-Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) has made monthly observations of the Moon since 1997. Using 66 monthly measurements, the SeaWiFS calibration team has developed a correction for the instrument's on-orbit response changes. Concurrently, a lunar irradiance model has been developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from extensive Earth-based observations of the Moon. The lunar irradiances measured by SeaWiFS are compared with the USGS model. The comparison shows essentially identical response histories for SeaWiFS, with differences from the model of less than 0.05% per thousand days in the long-term trends. From the SeaWiFS experience we have learned that it is important to view the entire lunar image at a constant phase angle from measurement to measurement and to understand, as best as possible, the size of each lunar image. However, a constant phase angle is not required for using the USGS model. With a long-term satellite lunar data set it is possible to determine instrument changes at a quality level approximating that from the USGS lunar model. However, early in a mission, when the dependence on factors such as phase and libration cannot be adequately determined from satellite measurements alone, the USGS model is critical to an understanding of trends in instruments that use the Moon for calibration. This is the case for SeaWiFS. OCIS codes: 010.0010, 120.0120, 120.0280, 120.5630.