Chemistry

Many chemical substances in the marine environment are invisible to the naked eye and can only be detected and tracked using specialised sensors or by analysis in a laboratory. A good understanding of seawater chemistry and its natural variability, in a given region, is fundamental to detect short, medium and long-term changes in the marine environment and to assess whether those changes pose a risk and require mediation.

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Examples of such change in seawater chemistry might include increase in pH due to ocean acidification, influx of nitrates from agricultural fertilisers, emissions from land-based industry such as power stations or sewage plants, oil leaks, chemical spills or pollution from mobile activities such as shipping or aggregate dredging. Early detection and tracking of the changes of pollutants at sea are vital for the effective mitigation of their impacts on marine habitats and human infrastructure.

The EMODnet Chemistry data infrastructure wants to provide free and easy access to marine water quality data and products. It is currently on the 4th phase of development. In its 1st phase of development (2009-2013), the Chemistry thematic portal initiated as a pilot project, with limited goals and partnership, to make a proof of concept. The positive outcomes brought the project to expand in geographic coverage in the 2nd phase (2013-2016) and in topics with the extension to marine litter during 3rd phase (2016-2018). In the current phase (2019-2021), EMODnet Chemistry will consolidate, together with the six other EMODnet sub-portals, the challenges towards an operational service with full coverage of all European sea-basins, a wider selection of parameters and multi resolution data products.

Objectives of EMODnet Chemistry

The overall objective of EMODnet Chemistry is to provide an overview and access to marine chemistry data sets and data products related to eutrophication, contaminants, and marine litter for six major European sea regions: Norwegian (incl. Barents), Baltic, N.E. Atlantic (Celtic Seas, Iberian coast and Bay of Biscay and Macaronesia), Greater North Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea. These information are specifically relevant for Marine Strategy Framework Directive Descriptors 5 (eutrophication), 8 (chemical pollution), 9 (contaminants in seafood) and 10 (marine litter), based on the guidance of the MSFD Common Implementation Strategy. This work is based upon input gathered and collated from national monitoring efforts and from research institutes activities from all European coastal states.

See specific objectives of EMODnet Chemistry

The specific objectives of EMODnet Chemistry are to:

Assemble measurements of nutrients and contaminants from the wide partnership, process them into interoperable formats with their appropriate metadata and allow public access to data and metadata;
Assemble measurements of marine litter from different sources, process them into agreed formats with their appropriate metadata and allow public access to data and metadata;
Visualise the temporal evolution of the concentration of nutrients for a given time and space window and also with a 6-year temporal window;
Visualise the measurements values above or below LOQ or EQSD thresholds as available for contaminants;
Visualise the marine litter density per year and for a given space window.

Key services provided by EMODnet Chemistry

The EMODnet Chemistry portal is currently built on a network of 48 connected marine research and monitoring institutes and oceanographic data management experts from 32 countries and 5 International organizations (the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and the Regional Sea Conventions). Many National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODC) are actively involved in managing, indexing and providing access to ocean and marine data sets, acquired from research cruises and monitoring activities in European marine waters and global oceans. As a result, EMODnet Chemistry can provide users with the following key services:

Data Access Service: provides functionalities to search for and download data sets;
Products Discovery Service: provides functionality to search for and download the available data products through a catalog service compliant with Inspire Directive and the OGC protocol;
Products Viewing and Downloading Service: provides a visualization service to view and download data products such as maps and plots.

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EMODnet Chemistry key services provides users with:

Controlled access to the large collections of data sets, managed by the interconnected data centres, in an harmonized and standardized format;
Unified and transparent overview of the metadata, including background information about standards, methodology and instruments for data collection;
Access to customized data products for nutrients, contaminants and marine litter, developed by EMODnet Chemistry and based on data held by interconnected data centres;
Tools to search and visualise the datasets and the data products.

In addition, EMODnet Chemistry embeds tools to:

Monitor usage and performance;
Allow registration of data requests and transactions;
Allow entry and updating of metadata by data centres;
Inform about common vocabularies and governance thereof;
Provide for authentication, authorisation & accounting.

Approach

The EMODnet Chemistry scope is extremely wide in the range of parameters, addressing high heterogeneity and complexity. To illustrate the situation:

3 matrices (water, sediment, biota) for 16 groups of variables (such as fertilisers, heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls, and others, including macro and micro litter in the sea, on the seafloor and on beaches) each having multiple parameters, measurement methods, laboratory methods, collection protocols, instruments used etc.
Different data distributions in time and space;
Different organisations leading environmental and research data in the different countries;
Heterogeneous data policy.

The approach applied has been first of all to gather relevant marine chemistry data sets (with a focus on eutrophication and contaminants), collected by marine environmental monitoring activities and by scientific research activities, and populating these in the SeaDataNet Common Data Index (CDI) Data Discovery and Access service. The CDI metadata model is INSPIRE compliant and supported by SeaDataNet Controlled Vocabularies. The CDI service has a central catalogue service, while access to linked data sets, managed by the distributed data centres, is facilitated for users by a shopping basket mechanism.

Data quality is a key issue when merging heterogeneous data from different sources. EMODnet Chemistry implemented a data validation loop for both eutrophication and contaminants, taking care that all identified errors and inconsistencies are documented and reported back to the originating data centres for local corrections and updating in their local databases and consequently in the CDI harvesting system.

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EMODnet Chemistry collects data together with a complete set of metadata, including information on data collection methods and quality checks. A first set of controls is carried out by the data centers prior even to the inclusion of the data in the distributed infrastructure.
A robot harvester, which is properly configured, internally extracts data and metadata in Regional Data Buffers.
A data aggregation, with unit conversions and a regional data quality control based on a common protocol is performed at Regional level (in the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the Norwegian & Barents Sea, the Atlantic area, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea). As a result, quality checked Regional Data Buffers are obtained for the products generation.
Regular reports are sent to the data collators to correct errors or anomalies in the master copy of the data and to guarantee the data quality upgrading.
As a result, the official copy of the data available from the distributed infrastructure is continuously updated.
On top of the pool of aggregated and validated data (Regional Data Buffers) a set of products, capable of highlighting the features of the source data, are generated.

In parallel, the EMODnet Chemistry consortium has initiated the collection of quality information 'ex-ante,' related to the source laboratories analysis and based on ISO/IEC 17025/2005.

Data Sources

The partners of EMODnet Chemistry bring together extensive experience in collecting, processing, and managing chemistry data. This experience is combined with expertise in distributed data infrastructure development and operation, and in the provision of discovery, access and viewing services following INSPIRE implementation rules and international standards (ISO, OGC).

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National Oceanographic Data Centers (NODCs) have been actively engaged in marine data management for many decades and have the essential capabilities, skill base and facilities for data quality control, long term stewardship, retrieval and distribution of marine and ocean data;
Monitoring Agencies responsible for national monitoring programs for nutrients, marine litter and hazardous substances, some of whom are already included in the network of EMODnet Chemistry partners;
Research Institutes that acquire data on nutrients, marine litter and contaminants in different matrixes for specific project’s needs, several of whom are already included in the network of EMODnet Chemistry partners

EMODnet Chemistry data product development

A set of dedicated products are developed and customized to the peculiarity of the data. Nutrients in the water column are widely monitored; the space and time coverage allows to compute basin-scale interpolated maps. Contaminants shows enormous heterogeneity in the sampled parameters, in the analysis methods, in the species group and biota part monitored; the dedicated products aim at featuring these heterogeneities, and to be a useful tool in environmental impact assessment analysis requested by many EU directives (in particular MSFD and WFD). Marine litter maps are generated for beach and seafloor litter, covering official monitoring and other data sources on dedicated layers.

Time series data are visualized as Dynamic plots, which can be customized in order to display vertical profiles of chemical properties in time- or depth-ranges selected by the user. All metadata on all used observations are linked to the plot.

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EMODnet Chemistry spatial data products are obtained with DIVA (Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis) specialized tool for geospatial analysis and interpolation, averaging data on standard vertical levels, on seasonal scale, with 6-year temporal window spanning from the early 60-ties till today if allowed by the data coverage. The products are stored as NetCDF CF files and made available as WMS and WFS layers for easy browsing and adding.

EMODnet Chemistry dedicated maps for contaminants are computed for Pesticides and biocides (DDT, HCB), Antifoulants (TBT, TPT), Heavy metals (mercury, cadmium, lead), Hydrocarbons (Anthracene, Fluoroanthene, Benzo(a)pyrene, Hexachlorobenzene, Naphtalene), cover different temporal ranges, in accordance with MSFD report timeline, based on a 6-year cycle starting from 2012.

EMODnet Chemistry maps for marine litter show the distribution of litter in beaches and seafloor. In particular, layers of survey locations with indication of the litter reference list used to perform the survey, temporal coverage and number of surveys present in the database, litter mean abundances and material percent and mean abundance of cigarette related items, fishing related items and plastic bags were computed for beach litter. Survey locations, litter density (items/km2), density (items/km2) of fishing gear related litter types and plastic bags were computed for sea floor litter.

The EMODnet Chemistry portal core services give access to the integrated maps of selected parameters. A WMS Registry listing all WMS services (NetCDF CF files available as WMS layers, CDI service available as WMS layers providing location of specific observation) guarantees full integration between EMODnet Chemical components (CDI service, products catalogue and viewing service), but also between the EMODnet portals.

Improvements in the current development Phase III (2017-2020)

The present work of EMODnet Chemistry will be enlarged to:

Provide data layers to support main stakeholders involved in Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) assessment and reporting activities (Member States, EEA and Regional Sea Conventions).
Provide information on nutrient loads (nitrogen & phosphorous) to regional seas from major rivers.
Continue data gathering and development of data products on a European scale for beach litter, seafloor litter (i.e. litter collected by fish trawl surveys) and floating micro litter.
Analyse and extend the litter data management to new topics like floating macro litter, seafloor images or micro litter in sediment.