Publications

The Aircraft Center for Earth Studies advances airborne and marine sensing technologies for ocean and earth science. The peer-reviewed publications below reflect the research of our faculty, students, and collaborators across the center, listed by year with the most recent first.

2026

  • Tibermacine, I. E., Chirayath, V., Bouchelaghem, S., Oliver, T., Couch, C., Akridge, M., & Purkis, S. (2026). PICOGRAM - informing coral reef resilience-based management through prediction of individual coral organismal growth, recruitment, and mortality. Frontiers in Marine Science, 13, 1716796. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1716796 
  • Pikielny, N., Yang, J., Johri, S., & Chirayath, V. (2026). Automated Motile Marine Wildlife Detection in Coral Reefs using Airborne Fluid Lensing. IEEE journal of selected topics in applied earth observations and remote sensing, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2026.3693140
  • Chirayath, V., Tibermacine, I. E., Wang, I., & Bouchelaghem, S. (2026). Automated airborne detection of underwater munitions using NASA multispectral passive and active MiDAR Fluid Lensing [Technology and Code]. Frontiers in Marine Science, Volume 13 - 2026. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1776178 
  • Bouchelaghem, S., Chirayath, V., Tibermacine, I. E., Dempsey, A. C., & Purkis, J. J. (2026). Cm-scale marine habitat mapping of entire Tumon Bay, Guam Coral Reef using NASA airborne fluid lensing and NeMO-Net pre (2022) and post (2024) Typhoon Mawar. Frontiers in marine science, 13 - 2026. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1785978 

2025

  • Longenecker, J., Benzoni, F., Dunn, N., Fox, H. E., Gleason, A., Otis, D., Chirayath, V., Oury, N., & Purkis, S. J. (2025). Coral reef thermal microclimates mapped from the International Space Station. Coral reefs. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-024-02607-4 
  • Ayad, M., Lee, C. M., Porter, J. W., Chirayath, V., Nivison, C. L., Vaughn, K. M., & Kudela, R. (2025). Impacts of the 2023 Marine Heatwave in the Florida Keys: Detection and Analysis of a Mass Coral Bleaching Event Using Spaceborne Remote Sensing Imagery. Environmental science & technology. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c03122 

2024

  • Xi, H., Dong, X., Chirayath, V., Gleason, A. C. R., & Purkis, S. J. (2024). Emergent coral reef patterning via spatial self-organization. Coral reefs. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-024-02603-8 
  • Goddijn-Murphy, L., Martínez-Vicente, V., Dierssen, H., Raimondi, V., Gandini, E., Foster, R., & Chirayath, V. (2024). Emerging Technologies for Remote Sensing of Floating and Submerged Plastic Litter. Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland), 16(10), 1770. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16101770
  • Bakker, A. C. B., Gleason, A. C. R., Dempsey, A. C., Bachman, S., Burdick, D., Tarano, A. M., Chirayath, V., & Purkis, S. J. (2024). Remotely sensed spectral variability predicts reef fish diversity. Ecological indicators, 169, 112823. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2024.112823 

2022

  • Chirayath, V., Bagshaw, E., Craft, K., Dierssen, H., Lim, D., Malaska, M., Pizarro, O., Purkis, S., Schroeder, D., Sobron, P., Waller, S., & Winebrenner, D. (2022). Oceans Across the Solar System and the Search for Extraoceanic Life: Technologies for Remote Sensing and In Situ Exploration. Oceanography (Washington, D.C.), 35(1), 54-65. https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2021.416
  • Purkis, S., & Chirayath, V. (2022). Remote Sensing the Ocean Biosphere. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 47(1), 823–847. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-112420-013219 

2021

  • van den Bergh, J., Chirayath, V., Li, A., Torres-Pérez, J. L., & Segal-Rozenhaimer, M. (2021). NeMO-Net – Gamifying 3D Labeling of Multi-Modal Reference Datasets to Support Automated Marine Habitat Mapping. Frontiers in marine science, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.645408
  • Kline, D. I., Dehgan, A., Bunje, P., Selbe, S., Chirayath, V., Pizarro, O., Leray, M., Connolly, S., Bongaerts, P., Treibitz, T., Levy, O., Kriegman, D., Andersson, A., McField, M., & Duffy, J. E. (2021). The Coral Reef Sentinels Program: A Mars Shot for Blue Planetary Health. Marine Technology Society journal, 55(3), 118-119. https://doi.org/10.4031/MTSJ.55.3.51 

Top