SeaDAS 7.3 Released

[OB SeaDAS - aynur]

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SeaDAS 7.3 Release Notes
(Release Date: December 23, 2015)
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The SeaDAS development team is pleased to announce the release of SeaDAS 7.3, which is built atop a slightly modified BEAM 5.0.1 version.
The science processing code has been updated to reflect changes recently implemented in production, provide bug fixes and support for the R2014.0 reprocessing for SeaWiFS.

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GUI Interface
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Features/ Modifications

GPT operator added
- Write Image Operator. This command line operator enables the export of images. It includes
parameters for including gridlines, contour lines, color bar, and text annotation on the image.

Bowtie correction for VIIRS has been improved to better handle the aggregation zones.

Color Palettes
- Universal palette (color blind compliant) added along with associated color scheme default configurations.
- Chlorophyll Blue-Green palette and scheme added.
- Palette export now sorts entries in the exported text file.
- User can now remove the default color palettes.

RGB Profile
- User can now edit any of the rgb profile text files.
- Added 2 new generic rgb profiles (linear and log).

Land Mask & Coastline Tool
- Defaults changed
* Super sampling default set to 3
- takes longer to run but is a much more accurate reprojection of the land data into the image view.
* Coastline mask color set to black.
* Land mask color set to dark grey.

Icons Added
- Reprojection Tool.
- RGB Tool.
- Import Field Measurements (SeaBASS format).

Icons Modified
- Filtered Band Tool.
- Window synchronization (Navigation Controls).
- Cursor synchronization (Navigation Controls).

Folder renamed
- Renamed "Bands (Products)" folder to "Rasters".
Rationale: a more simple, generic name - this folder contains raster data which may include
but is not limited to: oceancolor data products, latitude and longitude data,
flagcodings, rgb virtual bands, and any number of user created virtual and real bands.

Bug Fixes

Version 7.3 fixes the following bugs:
- incorrect geolocation for MODIS 250 and 500m resolution data.
- geometries could not be exported from a loaded smi image.
- sessions could not be saved and reloaded if colorbar layer present.
- no-data layer sometimes toggled to top of the layer stack.

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Science Processing Code
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Features/ Modifications

l2gen:
- modified BRDF function to allow LUT files to be netCDF format.
- added a user-contributed chlorophyll algorithm, (ABI: chl_abi; Shanmugam, 2011).
- added support for NASA-formatted VIIRS L1 products.
- added new flag for VIIRS bow-tie deleted pixels.
- added support for SST products for VIIRS.
- added new triple-window SST algorithm for VIIRS.
- modified Landsat OLI reader to use reflectance scaling rather than radiance scaling.
- generalized NDVI algorithm.
- added "slot" product for GOCI.

l1info:
- additional output added (e.g. Orbit_Number).

l3mapgen:
- redesigned to improve speed.
- added RGB support.
- added support for outputting:
variance, standard deviation, number of observations, number of scenes,
observation time and bin number.
- added ability to output more than one product per file (netCDF).
- added the ability to output 2 files of different formats.
- added ability to use SMI file as input.

multilevel processor:
- added capability to process tarred VIIRS SVM files.
- made modification that allow processing to continue when a corrupt data file is encountered.
- fixed several bugs.

Bug Fixes (Science Processing Code)

l2gen:
- fixed issues with primary productivity algorithms (opp_XXX)
- fixed bug in Es output

l3bindump:
- fixed bug that affected full globe output

l3mapgen:
- fixed reporting of latitudes in netCDF output

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Useful Notes
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Help Pages
Some of the help pages internal to SeaDAS 7.3 have not been revised to match the current version so there can be some wording discrepancies as well as feature description differences. However, we regularly produce video help tutorials http://seadas.gsfc.nasa.gov (/tutorial). We feel this to be the best, most functional way to enable the user of SeaDAS to get the most out of the software. In additional we regularly respond to SeaDAS issues on the our user forum (http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/forum/oceancolor/forum_show.pl). Questions posted on the forum help aid us in determining aspects of SeaDAS which may benefit by refinement, as well as give us ideas for topics to be used in future tutorial videos. Also note that these internal help pages are alos made available at (http://seadas.gsfc.nasa.gov/help/)

Notes on Upgrading your SeaDAS version
If you already have SeaDAS version 7 or higher installed:
In your home directory there is a directory titled '.seadas'. This contains version-specific preferences and defaults. This directory also contains any custom color palettes and rgb-profiles which you may have created. Because of this, a seadas installation will automically move and rename the previous '.seadas' directory putting it in your home directory. When seadas is launched and does not find this '.seadas' directory, it will automically create this directory and initialize it with the package settings and defaults. You can then manually copy any of your custom color palettes and rgb-profiles from the backed up copy of your previous version's '.seadas' directory over into the '.seadas' directory.