Societal need for improved understanding of climate change, anthropogenic impacts, and geo-hazard warning drive development of ocean observatories in European Seas

Abstract

Please note that this is an author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available on the publisher Web site Highlights ► Societies increasingly depend on timely information on ecosystems and natural hazards. ► Data is needed to improve climate-related uncertainty and geo-hazard early warning. ► Observatory networks coordinate and integrate the collection of standardised data. ► Ocean observatories provide opportunity for ocean science to evolve.

Coastal observatories for monitoring of fish behaviour and their responses to environmental changes

“…The growing socio-economic concerns over the best practices for the exploration and sustainable management of marine commercial ecosystems and catastrophic events prevention (e.g., tsunami waves; Kasaya et al 2009, Chierici et al 2012, has driven the implementation of highly interdisciplinary monitoring fixed platforms, integrating biological, geological, and oceanographic sensors, during the past decade (Favali and Beranzoli 2006;Favali et al 2006;Lampitt et al 2010). As a result of these endeavours, there is on-going growth in research using cabled observatories presently occurring around the globe but to date mostly relegated to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 deployments in the deep sea (Ruhl et al 2011). Most cabled infrastructures are being installed in relatively unexplored seabed regions (Favali et al 2010;Aguzzi et al 2012a), with comparatively few being developed and deployed in shallow coastal zones ( Table 1).…”

A new method for ecological surveying of the abyss using autonomous underwater vehicle photography

“…Use of both the NOC Wide Angle Seabed Photography (WASP) system (Ruhl et al 2012) and Autosub6000 (present study; Tables 1 and 2) at PAP-SO enables a comparison of photographic survey performance. Autosub6000 has a higher shiptime efficiency, collecting 189,015 images covering some 26 ha in 22 h of ship operation time, representing a survey rate of 1.2 ha h ) collecting 2214 images.…”

“…Only by gathering data across scales in the range of 1 m 2 to 100 km 2 , often referred to as a landscape scale (Forman 1983), can a greater understanding of the functional relationships and heterogeneity within and between habitats be attempted. Such knowledge is now critical to our ability to manage and conserve deep-sea environments (Ruhl et al 2011). Current methods for the study of deep-sea megafauna include trawl sampling and photographic and video surveys.…”

Open-Sea Observatories: A New Technology to Bring the Pulse of the Sea to Human Awareness

“…A key work was carried out by H. Ruhl et al (2011) within the framework of the ESONET NoE project. It was aimed at reviewing the science areas in relation to ocean observatory research and introducing some of the scientific issues that observatories will help to address.…”

“…Consequently, due to the increase of anthropogenic modifications in the environment, one among the challenges of the 21 st century is to evaluate the sensitivity of the ecosystem to anthropogenic changes. Indeed, given the short-and long-term impacts of climate and global changes upon the primary production, the entire trophic chain is likely to be affected in a complex way (see the review in H. Ruhl et al (2011), section 2.4). This implies to accurately monitor the biochemical cycles and to gain more insight into the ecological functions of organisms at several levels of the trophic network according to the environment conditions and its evolutions.…”