European multidisciplinary seafloor and water-column observatory (EMSO): Power and Internet to European waters

Abstract

EMSO (The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory, www.emso-eu.org) is forging ahead through the next challenge in Earth-Ocean Science: How to co-ordinate ocean data acquisition, analysis and response across provincial, national, regional, and global scales. The coordination, analysis, and dissemination of ocean data continue to be a challenge across international boundaries. EMSO is a large-scale European Research Distributed Infrastructure (RI) of the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) roadmap, and is composed of fixed-point, seafloor and water-column observatories with the basic scientific objective of (near)-real-time, long-term monitoring of environmental processes across the geosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere. It is geographically distributed in key sites of European waters, from the Arctic through the Atlantic and Mediterranean, to the Black Sea. EMSO ended its Preparatory Phase, EU Framework Programme 7 (FP7) funded project in 2012, and is now in the Interim phase transitioning to the formation of the legal entity for managing the distributed infrastructure: the EMSO European Research Infrastructure Consortium (hereinafter EMSO-ERIC). A phased implementation will characterize EMSO site extension, construction and operation. Countries currently participating in EMSO are: Italy, France, Ireland, Spain, Greece, United Kingdom, Portugal, Romania, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Germany, and the Netherlands. The user community is open to all, and will be coordinated through an association called ESONET-Vi (European Seafloor Observatory NETwork - The Vision), following on the extensive scientific community planning contributions of the ESONET-NoE FP6 project. The most striking characteristic of observatory design is its ability to address interdisciplinary objectives simultaneously across temporal and spatial scales. Data are collected from the surface ocean through the water column, the benthos, and the sub-seafloor. Depending on the application, in situ infrastructures can either be attached to a cable, which provides power and enables data transfer, or operate as independent stand-alone benthic and moored instruments. Data, in both cases, can be transmitted realtime through either fibre optic cables, or through cable and acoustic networks that are connected to satellite-linked buoys. EMSO provides power, communications, sensors, and data infrastructure for continuous, high resolution, (near)-real-time, interactive ocean observations across a truly multi- and interdisciplinary range of research areas including biology, geology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and computer science; from polar to tropical environments, down to the abyss. Such coordinated data allow us to pose multivariate questions in space and time, rather than focusing on single data streams. Continuous data are required to document episodic events, such as earthquakes, submarine slides, tsunamis, benthic storms, biodiversity changes, pollution, and gas hydrate release. Longer term time series are relevant for monitoring global change. EMSO not only brings together countries and disciplines, but allows the pooling of resources and coordination to assemble harmonised data into a comprehensive regional ocean picture which it will then make available to researchers and stakeholders worldwide on an open and interoperable access basis.