COPERNICUS Coastal Service

Transcription

1 COPERNICUS Coastal Service The FP7 Space projects prospective A whitepaper List of Contributors Project FP7-AQUAMAR/ESA-GSE-MARCOAST FP7-OSS 2015 FP7--OSS 2015/FP7 AQUAMAR FP7-CoBiOS FP7 OSS2015 FP7 HIGHROC Name of the contributors Antoine Mangin(*) ACRI-ST (France) Carsten Brockmann Brockmann Consult (Germany) Paolo Manunta Planetek (Italy) Odile Fanton d Andon ACRI-ST (France) François-Régis Martin-Lauzer ARGANS (UK) Steef Peters Water Insight (The Netherlands) and colleagues from FP7 - CoBiOS Ned Dwyer UCC (Ireland) Kevin Ruddick RBINS (Belgium) (*) corresponding author antoine.mangin@acri-st.fr COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 1

2 Table of Contents 1. Purpose of this Document Rationale Needs for a Coastal Service Integrated Coastal Management Water Quality and pollution prevention Marine Environmental status preservation Proposed COPERNICUS Coastal Service (CCS) Potential content of the overall service Coastal products and services Catalogue Initial set of services Validation Earth Observation capabilities Targeted users Proposed COPERNICUS Coastal Service in the context of COPERNICUS COPERNICUS Coastal Service versus COPERNICUS (core) Services COPERNICUS Coastal Service versus COPERNICUS White paper on continental waters Benefits of a COPERNICUS Coastal service Acronyms and abbreviations BWD CCS EO EMODnet ICM MSFD WFD Bathing Water Directive COPERNICUS Coastal Service Earth Observation (from space) European Marine Observation and Data Network Integrated Coastal Management Marine Strategy Framework Directive Water Framework Directive COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 2

3 1. Purpose of this Document This document drafts the scope of an operational Coastal service (covering both marine and land aspects) to be considered in the upcoming framework of the COPERNICUS programme in the operational phase The aim of this document is to stimulate the discussion on the extent of a COPERNICUS Coastal service and to inform the EC on the coastal monitoring capacity developed through prototype services built on R&D funds. 1.1 Rationale The main motivation for the preparation of this document is the follow-on of several FP7 R&D projects which have been successful achieved, such as AQUAMAR, COBIOS, ASIMUTH, etc and the ESA GSE Marcoast project, paving the way towards operational monitoring services. Main outcomes of these R&D projects are recalled in this document. Coastal monitoring is a short name for the collection, analysis and publication of observations whether in-situ or remote sensed measurements (qualitative or quantitative), best being a mix, which can be used as evidence. It requires: 1) consensus of the parties involved (authorities, scientists) on measurement and assessment methods; 2) undisputable measurements supported by intercalibration and validation; 3) ways and means to expand spatially, temporarily and causally 1 the measurements; they are made of algorithms and dynamic modelling (data assimilation) for the latter roles, and interpolation schemes for the former. Quantitative measurements are usually in-situ ones, used as such or for calibration of remote sensing, and remote sensing is an expansion mean. In this respect, a number of FP7 projects contributed and possibly improved Europe s monitoring capabilities for the coastal zone. This was always done in close connection with the stakeholders responsible for fulfilling the requirements of WFD and MSFD, to ensure that developed techniques capitalize on current achievements and fill gaps identified by these users. By drafting and preparing the following elements for a coastal service in the frame of COPERNICUS, contributors to this white paper principally see a need for: A larger and recognised use of Earth Observation for environmental reporting: this is based on two main elements: a further improved and documented qualification of such observations for reliable environmental observations and the upcoming availability of a medium to long-term suite of satellite observations thanks to Sentinels missions. It is believed that a wider acceptance and consideration of EO by Members states for the benefit of larger and larger environmental monitoring programs and objectives will trigger a much larger acceptance by other stakeholders. A pan-european deployment of a coastal service allowing harmonisation across MS and based on experiences gained through ESA and EU R&D projects and supported by a clustering of regional expertise. Beyond the immediate benefit for the European Environmental goals, this would bear the possibility to also reach users outside Europe and hence contribute to a sustainable economic exploitation that would sustain the employment market in Europe. Optimisation of and best use of complementary observations means. Earth Observation cannot stand alone and should go together and consistently with in situ data collection. There is a real opportunity to optimise observation networks by combining EO, in situ and modelling such as investigated in FP7 OSS from one physico-chemico-biological parameter to another one COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 3

4 2. Needs for a Coastal Service In order to enact, enforce and ensure that Member States abide by the regulations which derive from relevant European Directives, and also in order to optimise the use of coastal areas in a sustainable development framework, there is a need for reliable monitoring tools of the ecological status of the coast and shoreline. The three main European Directives relevant in this framework are summarised below. 2.1 Integrated Coastal Management As part of its proposed Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) and Integrated Coastal Management (ICM), the EC has called for an 'ecosystem based approach' to ICM so as to ensure that the collective pressure of all activities is kept within levels compatible with the achievement of good environmental status and that the capacity of marine ecosystems to respond to human-induced changes is not compromised, while enabling the sustainable use of marine goods and services by present and future generations. Coastal areas are among the most populated areas in the world, this intensive concentration of population combined with excessive exploitation of natural resources is putting enormous pressure on coastal ecosystems and leads to habitat destruction and biodiversity loss, as well as space congestion problems and conflicts between potential uses (tourism, aquaculture, fisheries, agriculture, industry, off shore wind energy, shipping ). Human activities, but also climate change effects, natural hazards and shoreline dynamics such as erosion and accretion, can have severe impacts on [ ] coastal and marine ecosystems 2. Coastal zones are vulnerable areas to natural hazards (storms, flooding, erosion ) and climate change consequences such as sea level rise, which change the lives and livelihoods of coastal communities. Maritime spatial plans and integrated coastal management strategies should cover the full cycle of problem identification, information collection, planning, decision-making, implementation and monitoring of implementation and be based on best available scientific knowledge 2. The main parameters to be retrieved are related to shoreline modifications ( natural such as erosion, or human occupation) and limits between activities, characteristics of marine activities, and natural habitat health, water, soils and air quality (intrinsic pollution v. incidental pollution). 2.2 Water Quality and pollution prevention The Water Framework Directive (WFD) has the objective to reach a good ecological status of all surface waters, which includes transitional waters as well as near-coastal waters. Reaching this goal requires an assessment of biological, chemical and physical parameters, such as eutrophication status, tidal range, the depth, the temperature, the salinity, the current velocities, the wave exposure, the mixing characteristics, the resident/retention time, the turbidity, the substratum composition, the pollution level, the anthropogenic pressure and its impact, economic analysis It is supplemented by the Bathing Water Directive for the cyanobacteria risks. Most important is the monitoring of water discharge in coastal waters. The main parameters to be measured are related to pollutants (type and quantity) and the ecological status of the environment (physico-chemical, biological & hydromorphological quality): phytoplankton 2 COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 4

5 and other aquatic flora, macro-invertebrates on the shore, fishes, hydrology and morphology, thermal conditions, salinity, oxygenation, nutrients, pollutants and other substances ). 2.3 Marine Environmental status preservation The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MFSD) is an EC Directive similar to the WFD described above. While the WFD is more focused on inland waters and their quality for consumption, the MSFD applies to marine waters, i.e. waters, the seabed and subsoil on the seaward side of the baseline from which the extent of territorial waters is measured extending to the outmost reach of the area where a Member State has and/or exercises jurisdictional rights. The objective of any policy based on the MFSD is to get clean, healthy and productive [seas] within their intrinsic conditions and to promote the use of the marine environment at a level that is sustainable, thus safeguarding the potential for uses and activities by current and future generations. After a preliminary/initial assessment of the marine ecosystem status in transitional, territorial and coastal water areas, monitoring programmes have to be put in place by EU member states; they shall be consistent across trans-border marine regions and abide to standards and ensure comparability between monitoring and assessment results, and which are designed to amend non-essential elements. definition of descriptors of good environmental status monitoring of biological diversity status-quo; The monitoring programmes, based on indicators, yet to be designed homogeneously for all EU member states, shall include i. activities to identify the cause of the changes and hence ii. the possible corrective measures that would need to be taken to restore the good environmental status, when deviations from the desired status range have been identified, plus iii. activities to check that the corrective measures deliver the desired changes and do not deliver any unwanted side effects. The MSFD is a commitment of EU Member states to the EU: competent authorities are governmental organizations. The assessment & monitoring services can be public services, subcontracted public services or concessions. The above-described Directives present some specificities but also some commonalties in terms of data collection requirements for monitoring. The technical and scientific state of the art of today allow to propose a consistent and deeper use of Earth Observation for the purpose of these monitoring in complement to in situ network and making the optimal use of COPERNICUS Sentinel missions. COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 5

6 3. Proposed COPERNICUS Coastal Service (CCS) 3.1 Potential content of the overall service Because water bodies, and their constituents, cannot be observed independently from its surroundings, a COPERNICUS Coastal Service would be made of: i. a coastal mapping service, delivering a set of maps of satellite derived parameters of biological, geomorphological, land use, sea bottom classification features that are considered as stable in time and that represents a reference state (deterministic or statistical). ii. a coastal marine characterisation service, processing and delivering dynamical information on water quality (in its broadest sense) and the hydro-geomorphology at high frequency in time with uncertainties assessment as required for environmental reporting, incl. estimates of constituents fluxes (interaction land-sea). 3.2 Coastal products and services Catalogue The catalogue of products would be made of three categories of products: 1. Reference / initial states (e.g. the shoreline geolocation, coastal waters quality, benthic classifications) 2. Estimation of trends (e.g. short term to long term evolution observations, ) 3. Detection, characterization and bookkeeping of events (e.g. anomalies from one state to another ) The relevant products to be generated by a COPERNICUS Coastal Service are described in the next section. Their correspondence with the categories of products in the catalogue is summarised in the following table. Reference / initial state Estimation of trends Detection of events (*) For shallow waters Coastal mapping service Anthropic pressure, Bathymetry/Coastline, Sea-bed mapping (*); Transparency (stat), Chlorophyll-a (stat), Idem as above for decadal monitoring Coastal characterisation service Anthropic pressure, Bathymetry/Coastline, transparency, Chlorophyll-a, Harmful Algal Bloom, Sea-beds sediments & habitatschanges (*) Harmful Algal Bloom, habitats decay or invasion, Chlorophyll-a COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 6

7 Targets cf : spatial resolution for bathymetry shall be 10 m, 5 m for coastline, for 2.5 m habitats mapping, 30 m for water quality and 250 m for ecological events; coarser resolution could be accepted in a preliminary phase, all the more that is acceptable a few miles from the coast in the open ocean; temporal resolution will depend on the availability of data and budgets of estimates uncertainties (enough data to assess characteristics without biases) for events alerts, fusion of data from various EO missions is a requisite Initial set of services Monitoring of Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) surface concentration This quantity is derived since more than 15 years from the sea surface coloration (Ocean Colour measured from space). It has been proven to be mature enough to be used for operational targets (eutrophication and algal blooms alerts), environmental reporting and climate change analysis. This data is explicitly required for WFD, MSFD, UNEP-MAP and is valuable information for BWD and ICZM. The CCS shall provide regular mapping of Chl-a statistics (e.g. yearly P90 has been chosen for WFD and MSFD reporting). This observation technique has already been adopted for reference state characterization at French level for the MSFD (see Figure 1), for optimizing and supplementing the in situ monitoring of eutrophication in Belgium and is also considered for the Dutch reporting Monitoring of turbidity / water transparency The sediment load in sea water is an indicator of both terrestrial export to the sea (with for some cases pollutant export estimates) and of variability of sea transparency and available light for marine life. Earth Observation has proven to be a reliable means for assessing water transparency and turbidity and its temporal fluctuations at large scale. Monitoring of this parameter (either under the form of light penetration depth or turbidity) is required for WFD, MSFD, UNEP-MAP and indirectly by ICM. Transparency is also required for regional regulation (such as HELCOM). The CCS shall provide turbidity/transparency maps under the statistical forms (monthly aggregation, trends) required by regulations see for instance Figure Detection of Harmful Algal Bloom Thanks to the availability and specificities of several recent ocean colors missions, Algal Bloom monitoring on European waters has had significant success and has expanded considerably in the last ten years. Several techniques allow either to detect anomalies in surface composition that point toward a likelihood of blooms or some algae taxa can be directly discriminated from observation from space. This information is particularly relevant for ICZM, BWD, MSFD and UNEP-MAP and could also be of interest for WFD. The CCS shall provide maps of occurrence of Algal Bloom and the likelihood of algae type (see Figure 3), on a daily basis and under the form of monthly/yearly statistics Mapping of shallow waters sea bed The mapping of the sea floor is of prime importance to better understand the impact, the remediation and its efficiency, of anthropic pressure on the biodiversity on the sea fixed vegetation and in particular the Algae meadows (such as Posidonia) and coraligens populations (see Figure 4). In that respect, high resolution imagery allows, combined or not with ancillary information, to retrieve classification of sea floor occupation which is particularly relevant for ICM, WFD and UNPE-MAP in addition to regional/local regulations. COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 7

8 The CCS shall propose the systematic mapping of sea floor (as being investigated for instance under various spatial scales by the EUSeamap project). The coastal benthic mapping of today is very unequal in quality and extent from one Member State to another. The CCS shall harmonise this mapping Mapping of thecoastline and the shore As for classification of sea bottom, high resolution imagery is used for bathymetry retrieval (see Figure 5). This technique, formerly applicable for very uniform type of sea bottom (e.g. sandy), has become more and more operational for other types of bottom thanks to the availability of specific missions as Worlview-2 that presents the right spectral resolution for this application. The CCS shall apply this technique to support the WFD, the BWD, the ICM and the UNEP-MAP which explicitly require morphological information and dynamic monitoring. Sea Bed mapping quality and extent is however obviously linked to the light penetration into the waters and so is more adapted to clear waters. This is a typical example where complementarity between in situ observations and EO is fundamental Monitoring of anthropic pressure at coast w.r.t. land usage The land use classification at coast is mainly required by ICM, WFD and BWD. Besides some parameters of coastal land use (e.g. number of artificial/anthropic structures along the coastline) which are explicitly required, the primary idea is to support the characterisation of anthropic pressure and its evolution in space and time. Characterisation of coastal watersheds and beaches profiles are also explicitly required by BWD. The CCS shall provide land use classification (see Figure 6) specific to the coastal developments (breakwaters, sea defense infrastructure, ) as well as indicators for anthropic pressure (statistical zoning of turbid rivers plumes) Other parameters assessment The above list of parameters that shall be delivered by the COPERNICUS Coastal Service is not exhaustive. In its present form, it contains products that are mature enough to take part in an operational service (given access to in situ data e.g. through EMODnet for validation). Other products/services shall benefit from on-going R&D activities to access to the right level of maturity for deployment and environmental reporting, for instance the one using biogeochemical modeling (see section below) that has been further developed under FP7 projects (CobiOS, OSS2015 ) Validation For all products and informations delivered by the services which are listed hereabove, the important aspect for which FP7 projects have been very careful has been the validation steps. Validation means that all the methods to retrieve bio-geo-physi-chemicalquantities from Earth Observation (possibly with any types of modeling) have been validated by comparing them with in situ truth when available in order to check and statistically demonstrate that the retrieved quantities are lying within a known, documented and acceptable accuracy. This aspect is particularly important for the products types to be eligible for reporting. Validation of a published product or information is then related to quality control. This aspect is particularly important for the products to be integrated in reports as evidences. Therefore, validation is proposed to be an entire part of the CSS (which surprisingly enough is not the case for most of in situ observations used for operational monitoring). Validation of products and Quality Assurance of services is crucial for achieving acceptance and for continuously monitor if the required product quality is achieved. Different methods are usually applied COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 8

9 to generate the above mentioned parameters, depending of specific physical, chemical and biological conditions of the coastal zone, as well as depending on the instruments (space and ground based, models) involved. The FP7 project Aquamar and the ESA GSE project Marcoast have developed a validation process which has grown over a long time and with close iteration with users. It has been adopted by other FP7 projects. It consists of a set of different thematics to be addressed, namely documentation, product accuracy, service reliability, compliance with SLA. The basic quality analysis has to be done by the service provider, submitted to and reviewed by an independent expert and finally sent for commenting to the user. The whole procedure is highly standardised and should become integral part of a CCS. Users have requested to further develop the validation process towards a certification scheme, which could be done in parallel in the R&D domain (Horizon2020). In order to capitalize on the existing large European effort, this validation will rely on EMODnet in situ data collection and, wherever necessary on Seadatanet data. Inclusion of additional sources of in situ data from less centralized and less institutionalized sources and services should be one priority. An example is the inclusion of in-situ observed reflectances to validate the direct satellite observations, but also to create datasets for algorithm refinement. These range from European -scale efforts like Eye On Earth and WISE to scientific co-operation based systems like MERMAID and to regional and local services in national and even municipal levels. As phenomena of interest in coastal sea can be rather local, so are the sources to complementary information in addition to EO. A harmonizing and summarizing service level is required in order to effectively use validation information for verification and improvement of data and services to meet the actual needs of the different types of users. COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 9

10 3.2.4 Earth Observation capabilities R&D initiatives over recent years at national and European level demonstrated that the Ocean Colour products provide powerful and reliable information for some descriptor/indicator of the MSFD. As an illustration, the French ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development has requested Ifremer to prepare the reference state for surface marine Chlorophyll-a and Turbidity over the Western Continental Shelf. This has resulted in an atlas, with documented uncertainties on products that would serve as reference for the next environmental report (F. Gohin, Ocean Sciences 7, , 2011). The CCS will rely on all sustainable and validated remote sensing information available through the COPERNICUS core services as well as on specific products derived by CCS on purpose. In terms of satellite remote sensing (EO) capabilities: o o o Nota : high spatial resolution satellite-derived surveys (optics and radars) to avoid overlap between land and waters; as well as spectral diversity remote sensing optical observations with high spectral resolution to get a wide and precise scope of parameters ; recurrence of observations. i. Spatial resolution shall be adapted to the shoreline scale of a few meters (to avoid radiance crosspollution between land and sea), and requires proper geolocation and orthorectification. High resolution is of the order of a few meters in the coastal zone and is available from satellites designed for intelligence gathering (SPOT, RapidEye, TerraSAR-X, WorldView2, Pleiades ). Topology and topography analysis of images is the usual output: - detection, characterization, identification and mapping of objects, - terrain elevation. ii. Spectral diversity & resolution, which implies to proper calibration of algorithms in each area, comes from satellite sensors designed for scientific purposes such as Landsat 8 and the COPERNICUS Sentinel constellation. Radiance analysis is performed to retrieve geo-biochemical parameters of the terrain. Yet, it has insufficient spatial resolution in coastal areas, in particular at shore infrastructure scales. iii. Whatever the polar-orbiting satellites constellation, the temporal resolution is insufficient for events monitoring due to their time scale and the loss of data during cloudy periods, and for trends assessment because of the diurnal or tidal characteristics; and recurrence can only be obtained from use of observations of different origins. It requires inter-calibration and specific fusion processes. The evolution from the prototypes which were funded within the FP7 is twofold: a. the plain application of the methods to Sentinel 3 data (similar to MERIS and AATSR) and Sentinel 1 data (similar to ERS1, ERS2 and RA-2), but with insufficient spatial resolution of S3 close to the coast for these areas : calibration of other satellite data; and constraints on & boundary conditions of biogeochemical/optical models of the coastal zone see point below b. extensions for higher spatial resolution observations : - the potential application of the methods to Sentinel 2 and Landsat 8 data HR satellite imagery (e.g. SPOT) as long as these satellite bands are close to the ones used on S3 for parameters retrieval - Sentinel 1 & TerraSarX data fusion; and Sentinel 3, Sentinel 2 and HR satellite observation data fusion for the refinement of parameters retrieval COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 10

11 3.3 Targeted users Due to the fact that coastal areas support a convergence of activities, there is a wide range of users of a COPERNICUS Coastal Service with mandates or requirements to collect information and monitor aspects of the coastal environment. For the three policy areas outlines above, the national level agencies involved in the different member states include: National Environmental Protection Agencies National Geological Surveys/Resource Management Agencies Water Agencies/Authorities National Hydrographic/Land Survey Agencies Other users also have requirements for information (eg public health ministries, food safety departments, civil protection) but these organisations tend to rely on one or more of the above organisations to collect and provide the required environmental data. In addition, in many cases (e.g. collection of water quality information), responsibility for the day to day monitoring is often delegated to regional or local level organisations, primarily local environmental protection agencies. In these situations, the regional authority may collect environmental data while national agencies then aggregate the information into indicators or higher level customised information layers and indicators. National level information collection and aggregation supports two reporting lines: To the European Commission (usually DG Environment or DG MARE) or to the European Environment Agency. To the secretariats of international agreements covering European coastal areas, including the Oslo Paris Commission (covering the North Sea area), the Helsinki Commission (covering the Baltic Sea), the Barcelona Convention/UN Mediterranean Action Plan (covering the Mediterranean Sea) and the Black Sea Convention (covering the Black Sea). In addition, information of relevance for fisheries management is provided to the International Council for the Exploration for the Seas (ICES) while there are more localised cooperation frameworks (e.g for the Wadden Sea) where information from different member states must be integrated. Users of a COPERNICUS Coastal Service would be the public authorities and agencies in charge of maritime policies. In particular, the service could be used by governmental agencies whether European, national, regional or local -, for the implementation of their own subsidiary strategy to abide to the Community goal of a good marine environmental status. COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 11

12 3.4 Proposed COPERNICUS Coastal Service in the context of COPERNICUS In the present structure of COPERNICUS, there are six core services, called COPERNICUS services previously GMES core services, three of them addressing the three Earth systems (land, ocean, atmosphere) and the three others being more horizontal and addressing multi-thematic issues. A COPERNICUS coastal service would be a subsidiary of the land, marine and possibly atmosphere services,acting as an assembly node with added-value to serve, among others, the purpose of the three horizontal ones. The coastal service shall therefore rely on ocean, land and atmosphere COPERNICUS services COPERNICUS Coastal Service versus COPERNICUS (core) Services Coastal parameters are land s, marine s, atmosphere s and anthropic features. Coastal monitoring requires information from land, marine and atmosphere side, so ideally the CCS should be connected to the three corresponding core services for data delivery. Alternatives to a CCS could be a thematic scope extension of the COPERNICUS Marine or Land Services (or ultimately of both). It as been investigated by contributors to this White Paper. Tthe issue is not so much that a split in the data production would multiply interfaces and data exchanges leading to a loss of integrity of the coastal zones thematic for reports exactly at the opposite of the notion of Integrated Coastal Management, but also the fact that the coastal land, marine and atmosphere products are so different from continental and ocean ones, incl. in the atmosphere (e.g. aerosols). E.g. the COPERNICUS Marine Service addresses large scale and large spatial resolution that are not the ones relevant for coastal areas (indeed, specific modeling is classically used to downscale marine information to required temporal/spatial resolution at coast). To what concern the use of Earth Observation for coastal/nearshore monitoring on marine side, the medium scale measurements (i.e. 1 km resolution) are not fit for purpose and the fusion with higher resolution observation and/or complementary exploitation of modeling (physical and biogeochemical) has to be performed. Concerning anthropic pressure characterization (but also sea bottom mapping), the technique of use are very close to land use classification and more generally to land applications. E.g. with respect to the COPERNICUS Land Service, the challenge for coastal zones monitoring and applications (regardless if it corresponds to application of environmental directives or impact studies) is to identify and quantify anthropic pressures on coastal ecosystems and to quantify resulting impacts and threats. Anthropic pressure is generally characterized from the land side (although marine activities such as shipping/moorings and atmospheric fluxes due to anthropic emissions should also be considered but are considered as marginal excepted for pollution fluxes). In most cases (i.e. excepted for algal blooms that might have larger extent), the spatial scale for consideration is in the order of some tens of meters in line with the scale of all elements of human intrusion at sea outflows, breakwaters, land use on watersheds etc Knowing the CCS have to deal with both Land and Marine core Services, and to a lesser extend the atmosphere core service,but have to address the special issues relative to the connectivity of coastal waters to land, the Land Service has been found by the investigators and authors of this report to be more relevant to host the CCS as: 1. Spatial scales of interest are more in line with the COPERNICUS Land Service 2. Techniques of data handling, processing, fusion and classification are closed to COPERNICUS Land Service 3. Coastal interests and monitoring are in general linked to, and driven by, terrestrial concerns COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 12

13 3.4.2 COPERNICUS Coastal Service versus COPERNICUS White paper on continental waters. Writers of this paper are aware of the content of the COPERNICUS White Paper on continental waters it is important to mention that, even thematically connected, interests (apart from WFD application) and requested expertise are not the same for both fields of applications. However, even if the proposed CCS is independent from the continental water initiative, necessary thematic links will be kept for running and deployment of both services. COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 13

14 4. Benefits of a COPERNICUS Coastal service Coastal and Marine Environment Monitoring is currently performed by national, regional or local public agencies which rely on their own means for in-situ measurements and do most often not have time for surfing for data that could be supporting their work. A COPERNICUS Coastal Service is a cost-effective and harmonizing solution: - instead of keeping & building remote sensing departments, all the agencies involved in enacting public policies could focus on the interpretation of data, risk management and decision making; - policies being at the region/basin level, data to be considered by all policy makers and enforcers shall be the same or designed the same way; - being linked to legal instruments of coastal environment health preservation, data on the said environment shall be recognized as evidence in judicial and administrative proceedings without discrepancies between the data providers. During the various projects executed under FP7 and ESA funding, many of these users have been exposed to customized information products that would be incorporated into a potential Copernicus Coastal service. Their feedback gives a useful perspective on the benefit and impact that such a service could generate. Benefits and impacts cited with respect to demonstrations of prototype services include: The capacity of EO based information to fill in gaps (spatial and temporal) in in-situ data collection networks, in particular to provide an extension of the monitoring capability to areas not covered by conventional data collection networks. Data from EO based information have, in many cases, been directly used as part of the national agencies reporting under EU coastal legislation. Providing a homogeneous framework against which in-situ measurements can be effectively combined or their significance understood. In-situ measurements provide a local or point measurement and the location may not be optimal for the effective characterization of a particular process or phenomena. However EO derived information can provide contextual information that enables the situation around a measurement to be understood and the measurements from different areas combined in a consistent manner. In a number of cases, the EO based information has also supported a redesign of the in-situ measurement network Supporting regional inter-calibration this issue is related to the previous point in-situ measurement networks are designed and put in place by regional or national institutions to measure parameters of local importance. These may not always be optimized to support reporting under EU legislation. EO based information provides a baseline against which these different measurments can be inter-calibrated. It is worth noting that the capacity of EO based information to enhance the process of combining different in-situ measurements has been recognized both at national level for combining data collected by different regional authorities and at European or pannational level for combining the information reported by different Member States. By extrapolation, a COPERNICUS accreditation could be given to any monitoring services targeting various scales - that comply with these criteria and do not interfere with public authorities in charge of policies implementation COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 14

15 APPENDIX I : Most relevant FP7 and ESA projects as basement of COPERNICUS Coastal Service In addition to a GMES marine core service prototype system (MyOcean), the EC has funded numerous R&D projects to prototype and demonstrate the feasibility of COPERNICUS based downstream services, e.g. Aquamar for generic water quality, Asimuth for harmful algal blooms, CoBIOS for biomass blooms, SeaU for oil spill detection, Sidarus for sea-ice detection and characterization, Opec for ecological impact assessment of human activities, etc. Simultaneously, the EC has funded research projects such as Field_AC and Operr for the modelling of land water discharge, OSS2015 for biogeochemical modelling, Sangoma for the refinement of data assimilation techniques dedicated to forecast models. A short summary of these projects is reported below. AquaMar/MarCoast MarCoast delivered three service areas concerning water quality at a pan-european scale; water quality indicator service, ocean colour data service and water quality monitoring services. MarCoast has been funded by the ESA under the GMES Service Element (GSE) scheme, to build on previous work and projects. In total there has been six years of data and communication with users. MarCoast ended on the 22 nd March AquaMar is an EC funded project, with the focus on R&D on water quality services and products not fully developed within MarCoast. AquaMar has seen the development of downstream services within the GMES scheme, as a support to the Water Framework Directive as part of a Pan- European service to monitor eutrophication. AquaMar finished on 21 st March OSS2015 OSS2015 has the ability to facilitate both upstream and downstream levels of research activities. The objectives are to deliver products which could be included in the MCS portfolio, and also to develop service lines. Furthermore, the products will complement the MyOcean catalogue with novel biogeochemical products and services not currently available to users. The proposed products are primarily global and will incorporate time series. There will also be regional products for the North Atlantic and the Ligurian Sea. Services should also provide the tools for users to perform product analysis and utilise the data to its full capacity. Methodologies are also being developed to determine the optimum deployment of bioprofilers/gliders. Distribution of data to users will also be addressed and improved. CoBIOS The main achievement of the CoBIOS project has been the enhancement of the output of ecological models based on existing models and new forcings based on Earth Observation (EO) data. The resultant EO products were originally derived from MERIS data, with the majority of products and services based around Chlorophyll-a (Chla) and transparency statistics and accuracy assessments. CoBiOS showed the possibility of making ensemble EO measurements and ensemble model resalisations to decrease the number of false positives and false negatives. The project is currently operates the service portal showing Chlorophyll-a measurements based on various algorithms and predictions on several models COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 15

16 with overlapping model domains. The project is now at the stage whereby people have gained confidence with the services developed using MODIS data. Asimuth Asimuth works directly with their users e.g. mostly aquaculture farmers, to refine the user service and project requirements. The project s focus is on Harmful Algae Blooms (HAB), which cause significant impacts on fish stocks, to the costs of Millions of Euros every year. Asimuth addresses the need for a HAB warning system across national and international borders in an attempt to share information already determined from a particular bloom across different domains. HAB warnings are required as soon as possible with the highest degree of accuracy possible. The goal is to deliver 3-4 day forecasts and early warning service. This will be achieved through a nowcasting service comprised of buoys around the Atlantic margin, satellite imagery and National Monitoring Plan data (augmented by in-situ). The data is presented via web browsers to users in an easy to understand way: influxes are shown in red and outfluxes in blue. The project also incorporates the use of Google map and smartphone interfaces to show the locations where the bloom is likely to occur. HIGHROC (to start in January 2014) The HIGHROC ( HIGH spatial and temporal Resolution Ocean Colour ) project will carry out the R&D necessary for the next generation coastal water products and services from ocean colour space-borne data, giving an order of magnitude improvement in both spatial and temporal resolution and thereby opening up new applications and strengthening existing ones. COPERNICUS services for marine endusers, e.g. for Water Framework Directive (WFD) reporting, now routinely use data from ocean colour remote sensors such as MERIS and MODIS, to be followed by OLCI. Despite their improved coverage with respect to in situ monitoring, these sensors have critical limitations of spatial and temporal resolution (typically 300m, 1/day) with respect to user requirements. HIGHROC will derive coastal water quality parameters from a) Sentinel-2 (S2) at 10-20m resolution and b) SEVIRI at 15 min resolution, thus complementing OLCI data with a more than 10-fold improve in spatial and temporal resolutions. COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 16

17 ANNEX II Definitions Coastal which is a central naming for the proposed service covered areas and activities that prove to rely on clear dependency between land and marine activities. Coastal covers nearshore where observations at small spatial scales are required as well as larger scale features such as Algal bloom that could be triggered by human activities on land (release of nutrient from agriculture fertilizers) and that might impact human activities (bathing, fish farming ). The nearshore zone is relevant to application of WFD, WBD and ICM while larger zone is relevant to objectives targeted by the MSFD. a) Monitoring of the coastal environment means observing/measuring and keeping a continuous record of the state of the environment on the shore and in coastal waters, as well as checking progress in restoring the environment, i.e. enablers of the evaluation of the state of the coastal marine environment. Nota : - The word surveillance is often used to describe close-look observations for the monitoring of changing behaviours or information so as to act in case of regulations infringement or discovery of adverse effects. As observations deliver knowledge, surveillance is made for counter-reactions within a policy framework. For the record, the traditional roles sharing in a public policy chain is as below: a. improvement of knowledge is scientific research institutes task b. monitoring the environment are public labs needs if considered as a science topics (i.e. to discover, describe and explain phenomena), as well as needs of public agencies in charge of risk management and governmental policies design (deciding on good or bad status and trend) ; the former is related to point a. officials monitor the environment and the human activities for decision making and regulations enforcement; they need indicators, which are not scientific parameters but policy parameters with thresholds as targets (below threshold = good status, above = bad); estimation of the indicators are evidence c. environment users follow suit and check whether they abide to regulations or could make a better use of the environment the English word is also "monitor". - The EC uses the words surveillance monitoring to designate observations which validate the impact assessments, in particular of long-term trends as a result of changes in natural conditions or through anthropogenic activities Parameters are obtained from direct or indirect measurements (indirect measurement = output of the inversion of direct measurements in an equation) Indicators : qualitative or quantitative information on the state or conditions of the environment or human activities (for instance, temperature is a parameter, but the physical state of ocean waters at one point at a given time is given by the group of temperature and salinity; and an indicator of primary productivity could be the comparison between temperature and the temperature in the surroundings at the seasonal scale). Environmental laws and rules : regulation of the interaction of humanity and the natural environment, toward the purpose of reducing the impacts of human activity, which are enforced by the imposition of penalties. They are based on references to assess an accepted status. COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 17

18 Environmental policies are commitments to laws and regulations, or to plain statements, related to environmental issues and sustainability, i.e. overseeing of human activities and natural resources. Abidance to the laws and rules requires the assessment of trends and the monitoring of events. b) Service means the provision of assistance to any natural or legal private or public person, i.e. individuals, private corporations or public organizations. c) COPERNICUS service is a service intended towards the COPERNICUS user communities as per the documents published by the EC : the COPERNICUS user communities are defined as those comprising the European national, regional or local bodies entrusted with the definition, implementation, enforcement or monitoring of a public service or policy in areas referred to in Article 4(1) of the Regulation. Yet, the COPERNICUS regulations add downstream applications to users as targets of COPERNICUS services (downstream applications are defined below in 2.5 but it covers downstream industry, in particular SMEs; and customers of the downstream sector). d) COPERNICUS Core Services has numerous definitions & scopes in the statements of officials of the EC and the EC directives. Core services process observations of the environment and generate and distribute a comprehensive set of maps, products and information that can respond to stated enduser requirements [ ] through which the monitoring of the environment can be used to stimulate downstream applications, both public and commercial (Reinhard Schulte-Braucks, Head, COPERNICUS, EC, 16 May 2013). They are defined in article 4 of the Proposal for a Regulation of the European parliament and Council establishing the COPERNICUS Programme and repealing Regulation (EU) No 911/2010: in the Marine area, core services are dedicated to the state and dynamics of physical ocean and marine ecosystems for the global ocean and the European regional areas ; to the knowledge base needed to support adaptation and mitigation policies of climate change ; to emergency response in relation to different types of disasters, including meteorological hazards, geophysical hazards, deliberate and accidental man-made disasters [ ], as well as the prevention, preparedness, response and recovery activities. In summary : the application areas of the COPERNICUS marine services include maritime safety, the marine environment and coastal regions, marine resources as well as seasonal meteorological forecasting and climate monitoring; climate analyses and projections on a scale relevant to adaptation and mitigation and relevant service deliver; combination of maps and/or various levels of pre-processed data produced to support emergency response players at international, European, national or regional levels COPERNICUS Core Services is a synonym expression of COPERNICUS Services, and they could cover all environmental services from global scale to local scale through regional scales. Core services are defined as the opposite of downstream services which are commercial services (COM(2013) 312 final/2 dated ) : they are pan-european public space-based environmental monitoring services, i.e. services that are provided by the European supranational government bodies to people living within their jurisdictions. a) COPERNICUS Downstream Services are downstream of the COPERNICUS Core Services in the chain of value. They are not precisely defined except by the EC Europe 2020 objectives : new/additional services to the Core Services - boosting innovation in the downstream sector, developing new services relying on COPERNICUS information; - emergence of highly innovative downstream services. It aims to create partnerships between research and business communities and can set benchmarks for transfer of research and development into business; COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 18

19 - additional potential for new jobs. As such downstream services are defined as extension of core services, but the scope of the core services is yet to be defined precisely (see 62.4) b) A coastal monitoring service is the provision of assistance to public labs and governmental officials who apply public policies, an assistance in observing the environment and human activities ( monitoring ): provision of parameters values and, if needed, computation of indicators from the parameters. COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 19

20 ANNEX III Illustrations Figure 1: Exploitation of Earth Observation (Ocean Colour) for characterisation of water masses for WFD - MARCOAST Figure 2: Sea Water transparency (Secchi disk Depth in m) indicates area directly impacted by terrestrial fluxes as well as those submitted to sediment suspension due to waves actions AQUAMAR COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 20

21 Figure 3: Two examples of operational algal blooms detection - AQUAMAR Figure 4: Sea floor classification for a coastal area in the south Adriatic Sea, obtained from a WorldView-2 scene (spatial resolution 2m)- AQUAMAR COPERNICUS Coastal Service White paper 21