Release of Global Ocean Chlorophyll Monitoring VRE

On 9 March 2009, the Global Ocean Chlorophyll Monitoring (GCM) Virtual Research Environment (VRE) was released. This VRE is available through the project portal: http://portal.d4science.research-infrastructures.eu. The Global Ocean Chlorophyll Monitoring VRE allows to dynamically store and share resources from heterogeneous collections of data including Earth Science data and products.

The principal features of the VRE consist of:

• extended search over collections including geospatial search, Google search and browsing;
• dynamic creation and sharing of different annotations features with scientifically trusted users;
• user interactive template and reporting creation;
• dynamic metadata access and consulting.

Through this dedicated research environment, scientists can access many different Earth Observation data sources, including:

• ESA special issues Living Planet Programme and Earth Observation Handbooks;
• European Environmental Agency (EEA) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP) technical reports;
• European Space Agency (ESA) Earth Images;
• ESA Medspiration Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR);
• Environmental Satellite (Envisat) Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) and Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data;
• Envisat MERIS Chlorophyll in water products.

Phytoplankton (microscopic marine plants) contain chlorophyll, a green pigment used during photosynthesis. Satellite sensors measure chlorophyll concentrations in oceans, lakes and seas to indicate the distribution and amount of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is the base of the marine food chain and is a good indicator of the availabilty of food in a body of water, as it plays a similar role to terrestrial green plants in the photosynthetic process converting carbon dioxide to biomass. It is therefore important to monitor and model phytoplankton into calculations of future climate change, as it removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Phytoplankton also forms the basis of the ocean's food chain and has an essential role in the aquatic ecosystems. As GCM images are near real-time indicators of ocean productivity with a global coverage, they provide important information for marine scientists. Another important parameter that can be monitored using satellites is the Sea Surface Temperature (SST). SST measurements are utilized for operational tasks, such as providing forecasts of sea state and currents, for monitoring algal blooms or marine pollution, and predicting the fate of oil spills. Combining these images in an e-Infrastructure facilitates their availability to scientists who wish to exploit them. D4Science offers an environment where these images are easily recovered, kept in temporary ‘baskets’ and shared with other users or downloaded. The e-Infrastructure, in theory, can also be used for future processing scenarios to e.g. combine GCM images with aquamaps species distribution maps for fisheries studies, or to predict the impact of increasing sea surface temperatures on species distribution. More information: Global Ocean Chlorophyll Monitoring