Comprehensive, Continuous, and Vertical Measurements of Seawater Constituents with Triple-Field-of-View High-Spectral-Resolution Lidar.

Measuring the characteristics of seawater constituent is in great demand for studies of marine ecosystems and biogeochemistry. However, existing techniques based on remote sensing or in situ samplings present various tradeoffs with regard to the diversity, synchronism, temporal-spatial resolution, and depth-resolved capacity of their data products. Here, we demonstrate a novel oceanic triple-field-of-view (FOV) high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL) with an iterative retrieval approach. This technique provides, for the first time, comprehensive, continuous, and vertical measurements of seawater absorption coefficient, scattering coefficient, and slope of particle size distribution, which are validated by simulations and field experiments. Furthermore, it depicts valuable application potentials in the accuracy improvement of seawater classification and the continuous estimation of depth-resolved particulate organic carbon export. The triple-FOV HSRL with high performance could greatly increase the knowledge of seawater constituents and promote the understanding of marine ecosystems and biogeochemistry.