iSchool Capstone

Studying Phytoplankton Trends in Oceans Using Data Science

Project tags:

data science & visualization

Project poster

Discovering Phytoplankton Trends in Oceans Using Data Science Abhigyan Kaustubh (Full Time MSIM) Elton Dias (Full Time MSIM) Tanmay Modak (Full Time MSIM) Phytoplanktons are an important part of marine ecosystems, producing nearly half of the world’s oxygen supply by consuming carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Marine biologists find it difficult to exhaustively study habitats of phytoplankton as it is nearly impossible to draw discrete samples of water from large water bodies. We plan a novel technique of analysing multidimensional flow cytometry data collected by an oceanic cruise at regular time intervals and then use suitable clustering techniques to identify regions in the water body that have similar trends in phytoplankton population. We then plan to make inferences by correlating our findings with environmental factors like temperature and salinity. This is a unique approach and through our findings, we hope to lay the foundation for oceanographers and environmental researchers to conduct further research in marine habitats using data science

Project participants:

TANMAY MODAK

MSIM

Elton Dias

MSIM

Abhigyan Kaustubh

MSIM