Phytoplankton optical fingerprint libraries for development of phytoplankton ocean color satellite products

<p><span>Quantifying changes in phytoplankton communities using ocean color is essential for predicting ocean food resources, occurrences of harmful algal blooms, and carbon and other elemental cycles, among other predictions.  Here we present a dataset of greater than fifty strains of phytoplankton, from a range of taxonomic lineages, geographic locations, and time in culture, alone and in mixtures, grown to exponential and/or stationary phase for determination of hyperspectral UV-VIS absorption coefficients, multi-angle and multi-spectral backscatter coefficients, volume scattering functions, particle size distributions, fluorescence, and hyperspectral remote sensing reflectance.  The measurements obtained from these experiments are valuable to facilitate development of new global and/or regional ocean color models by the broader scientific community.  </span></p>