Following the trends and general objectives established by GOOS (Global Ocean Observing System) through its coastal ecosystems component COOP (Coastal Ocean Observations Panel), the present paper describes the design, first development stages and derived results of a coastal monitoring network, named Red ACOMAR Canarias (Network for Marine Surveillance, Control and Observation in the Canaries).The Red ACOMAR is based in a core project developed for the coastal areas around the Canary Islands archipelago, mainly composed of an anchored buoys surveillance system. Each buoy is integrated by a determined sensor suite (meteorological and oceanographic) and a bi-directional communications system. The buoys are autonomous monitoring systems, able to measure and transmit in real time information concerning environmental variables of interest.The network has a control centre that manages the transmission communications, and provides data in a useful form to diverse socio-economic important sectors which make an exhaustive use of the littoral in the Canary Islands, and need data from the buoys to well manage the coastal environment. The access to the information by the users is done through Internet, using a specific software application.In parallel with the continuous network development and implementation, autonomous systems have been developed to meet particular needs within the monitoring of characteristic physicochemical parameters in the marine environment.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.