Use Cases

Plastic pollution is a pressing global issue that endangers marine ecosystems, human well-being and animal welfare. Only 9 percent of plastic is recycled; by 2025, we could be dealing with up to 250 tonnes of mismanaged waste; every year the world uses up to 5 trillion plastic bags; about 10 million tonnes of plastic enters our oceans each year.

With over 300,000 water column profiles, in both coastal and deep sea areas, the National Oceanographic Data Centre at OGS manages the most comprehensive marine data storage in Italy. The multidisciplinary  archive includes data since 1909 up to now. It ranges  from physics to chemistry, from biology and geology to meteorology. Data are mainly collected by Italian institutions within the Mediterranean Sea basin, but also by other countries within neighbouring sea basins. Near real-time data are consistently integrated into the historical archive.

One of the main goals of OceanGliders, as part of GOOS, is to monitor and promote the activity of the glider observing network. The goal is not to provide data, but to document and give guidance on how to share someone’s glider activity, in order to raise their visibility and the visibility of gliders as whole, as concerns long-term sustained observing for societal benefit.

CSCS carries out glider missions all over the world. Gliders are small autonomous underwater vehicles that use changes in displacement to change buoyancy, and internal mass movements to attain pitch and roll movements. Coordinated by an on-board flight computer, this slow but very efficient profiling device collects data as it descends and ascends, sending the results and receiving commands every few hours when at the surface for many months at a time. 

The Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) has developed a first version of a web application with the “Total Sea Level” variable from EMODnet Physics. This solution presents a demonstrator of end-user application and decisional support dashboard systems to support public authorities in their daily management activities.

Collaboration between EMODnet Biology, EMODnet Seabed Habitats and OBIS (Ocean Biodiversity Information System) has facilitated richer dataset publication and ensured the greatest volume of high-quality species and habitat data are available for reporting, assessments and informed decision making.

Outcomes: Researchers were able to model the suitable habitat for European hake, Merluccius merluccius, in their first year of life (0-group) in the Mediterranean Sea.  The results show that hake nurseries require stable bottom temperatures, low bottom currents and a frequent occurrence of productive fronts in low chlorophyll-a areas in order to support successful recruitment, with conditions occurring recurrently in outer shelf and shelf break areas.  This prediction explains the role of unfavourable environmental conditions on low recruitment in past years.<