Coastwatch Water Quality Monitoring Service - GMES Service

Introduction

Water quality monitoring and assessment
Support to the deployment of the EU Water Framework Directive and marine conventions

ACRI-ST is in charge of the Water quality monitoring service which delivers both geo-referenced information in near real time from the acquisition and on ground reception and archived data. Delivered monitoring products are, for instance: chlorophyll a concentration, water transparency, sea surface temperature and primary production. A service of mesoscale structure detection and evolution is also available. Also warning bulletins are triggered and delivered in case of abnormal features observation. Assessment products are coastal integrated indicators, like turbid waters extension and seasonal variability.

These products are derived from Earth Observation data remotely sensed by environmental satellites like ENVISAT (MERIS instrument - ocean color), NOAA (AVHRR - sea surface temperature), and AQUA (MODIS - both ocean color and SST) and SEASTAR (SeaWIFS - ocean color). Use of these products are numerous, for instance:

• Environment qualiy and sustainability monitoring of marine resources
• Support to oceanographic cruises - mesoscale structures detection
• Algal bloom detection and monitoring
• Qualification of coastal sites for fisheries setting up
• Forecast of sea mammals migrations
• Pollution monitoring and survey of anthropogenic discharge at coast
• Hydrocarbures survey...

More generally in the frame of the WFD, this service acts for:

• Surveillance monitoring: (i) to provide assessment of long term changes in natural conditions, resulting from anthropogenic activity,* (ii) to supplement and validate impact assessment and (iii) to design better monitoring systems in the future
• Operational monitoring: (i) to identify the status of these bodies being at risk of failing to meet their environmental objectives, (ii) to assess any changes in the status of these bodies, (iii) to identify the impact on these bodies.
• Investigative monitoring: to ascertain the magnitude and impact of accidental pollution.
• Protected areas monitoring: (i) to control and monitor protected marine areas at the appropriate frequency and appropriate quality elements.

To get products which are not in the on-line catalogue, send a mail to coastwatch@acri-st.fr