Oceans and coastal zones
The Earth’s coastal and transitional waters are fundamental resources and encompass a broad
range of ecosystems that are core to global biogeochemical cycling, food and energy production.
The mounting conflicting pressures from the number of users and uses, coupled with population
growth, industrialization, land use intensification and climate change bring into focus the urgent
need for the sustainable management of our aquatic resources and space. The increasing
availability of satellite data from the new missions in this decade has radically transformed the
approaches to monitor and sustainably manage coastal and transitional systems and has
stimulated rapid growth in the development of downstream services.
This proposal aims to develop and validate innovative user-relevant satellite products in regards
to the biogeochemical properties of coastal and transitional waters to improve the management
and sustainable exploitation of these zones by exploring the capacity offered by latest generation
of satellite data (e.g. Sentinel-2 MSI, Sentinel-3 OLCI, HY-1, GF-1, GF-6, Jilin-1, and Planet
Dove) from Europe and China. In particular, we will develop and validate innovative products for
phytoplankton size classes (PSC, as an important parameter for shellfish aquaculture), primary
production (PP, leading to carrying capacity estimates for aquaculture and policy making),
specific ecosystem threatening harmful algae blooms (HABs) (e.g. caused by Pseudo-nitzschia
spp., including macroalgal blooms due to the macroalgae Ulva prolifera) and marine oil spills
(MOS). Our study areas will include and the Danube Delta & Black Sea coast, Galician coast
(NW Iberian Peninsula), Shandong Peninsula coast and Northern South China Sea. This
proposed work is under the topic of “Oceans & Coastal zones” and spans over the subtopics
“Algae and phytoplankton blooms” and “Marine dynamic environment”.
