On 17-18 October 2022, ocean stakeholders gathered in Venice, Italy for the first edition of the Sea Level Rise Conference. The conference was organised by the Knowledge Hub on Sea Level Rise, a joint effort between JPI Climate and JPI Oceans, in collaboration with its Italian partners and with endorsement by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The Conference brought together researchers, stakeholders and policy professionals to exchange on regional to local sea level change in Europe. Jan-Bart Calewaert, Head of the EMODnet Secretariat, participated in the closing panel as Co-leader of the Task Group on Communication. Also present on a panel that took stock of existing capability was Dr. Antonio Novellino, Research Manager at ETT and Coordinator of EMODnet Physics who shed light on the vast amount of open, free and harmonised data and information related to Sea Level Rise and coastal adaptation already available via EMODnet services.
Data
In 2021, the Commission for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea, also known as the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM), asked all countries that are signatories to the Helsinki Convention to submit 2016-2021 data from national coastal litter monitoring to EMODnet Chemistry. Since then, EMODnet Chemistry ingested, harmonised and validated data collected between 2016 and 2021 on 141 beaches in 9 countries. The data will be used to produce the beach litter indicator in the third State of the Baltic Sea' holistic assessment report (HOLAS).
The report and presentations are now available from a Coastal workshop convened by EMODnet and Copernicus Marine Service on 22nd September 2022. The meeting brought together experts from the Copernicus Marine Service, EMODnet, European Commission DG Defis, DG MARE and CINEA. Discussions focused on the latest coastal marine data and data products offered by each service, existing gaps and requirements for future evolution, synergies and alignments across data services and with wider European and global initiative. The agenda, minutes and presentations are available on the EC Maritime Forum.
In October 2022, EMODnet was invited to join the Offshore Renewables and Marine Spatial Planning sprint workshop, organised by the UN Global Compact Ocean Stewardship Coalition ocean management working group ‘Offshore Renewables and Sustainable Ocean Planning’. The series of four weekly meetings gathered key knowledge stakeholders to identify, communicate, and address the challenges associated with Maritime Spatial Planning for offshore renewables. The EMODnet Secretariat and EMODnet Human Activities presented EMODnet to the international community bringing key updates on EMODnet’s offer of marine environmental, human activities data and data products, including the hosting of National EU Member State Maritime Spatial Plans. Key messages and testimonials from the recent EMODnet workshops on “Marine Data for the Offshore Renewable Energy sector” were also presented.
The EMODnet Biology team is happy to announce the successful outcome of its initiative to engage volunteers to rescue a selection of identified historical biological data using citizen science platforms. The data rescued through the DoeDat platform (a platform developed, hosted and maintained at the Meise Botanic Garden in Belgium) was digitised by 4 volunteers. The data rescued via Zooniverse (the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research) involved 14 volunteers. The volunteers' efforts are highly appreciated. Following the digitisation, data managers will process, quality control and reformat the data so that it follows the same standards as any other biodiversity dataset published via EMODnet Biology. A full report will be published shortly. The lessons learned will be used in the future in assessing a large-scale initiative to engage volunteers in data rescue efforts.
EMODnet Chemistry Coordinator OGS, Italy was an author of the presentation titled “Coastline Litter in Europe - Data for policy” given by Georg Hanke of the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) at the latest edition of the 7th International Marine Debris Conference which took place on 18-23 September 2022 in Busan, Republic of Korea. This follows a long and successful collaboration between EMODnet Chemistry and JRC to provide the most comprehensive marine litter database in Europe. The presentation was part of the conference general topic “Stories and lessons from around the world: how monitoring can help develop measures to combat marine litter”.
The Sea Level Rise Conference 2022 on 17-18 October will bring together researchers, stakeholders and policy professionals at Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista (Venice, Italy) to exchange on regional to local sea level change in Europe. The conference is organized by the Knowledge Hub on Sea Level Rise, a joint effort between JPI Climate and JPI Oceans, in collaboration with its Italian partners and with endorsement by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
Applications to the Call for Decade Actions No. 04/2022 are now open. The Call is an invitation for worldwide partners to request endorsement for transformative Decade Actions that can contribute to the Ocean Decade vision on Challenge 6 – Coastal Resilience and on Challenge 8 – Digital Representation of the Ocean. Details are available on the Ocean Decade website's dedicated webpage.
Over the past couple of years EMODnet Biology has been focusing on the development of R packages that allow users to access EMODnet data via OGC webservices. These are now publicly available.
The EMODnet Seabed Habitats Map viewer contains over 80 modelled maps of specific habitat type. Models showing the predicted presence/absence of OSPAR habitats such as Lophelia pertusa and the newly listed Kelp Forests, are available to view, download or add as a web mapping service (WMS). Models for other Regional Sea Convention areas include spatial distributions of coralligenous outcrops across the Mediterranean Sea and over 20 species distribution models in the Baltic Sea.
EMODnet Chemistry has significantly expanded the new edition of the guidelines entitled "Updated guidelines for SeaDataNet ODV production: Eutrophication & Contaminants". The recently published manual explains to data providers which standards, tools and software provided by the SeaDataNet infrastructure are adopted by EMODnet Chemistry to harmonise and validate data. A list of the most important problems and common errors and how to solve or avoid them is also part of the guide. In addition to information on the correct submission of data for pollutants and eutrophication, this edition includes a full section on ocean acidity.
On the 1st of September, The Community of Practice (CoP) on Data sharing, information and communication technology serving Maritime Spatial Plans (MSP) organised its second Workshop meeting on "Coherence of the MSP data and information". EMODnet Human Activities attended the workshop online. Guest presentations were given by among others the Danish Maritime Authority and the Italian National Research Council, who both indicated to use EMODnet in their work.
On 20-21 September 2022, EMODnet together with EC DG MARE organised a workshop on “EMODnet marine data for the offshore renewable energy sector in the Northeast Atlantic, North Sea and Baltic Sea”. The workshop was attended by more than 65 offshore renewable energy experts with representatives from diverse sectors including industry, research and marine data services. EMODnet was well represented by thematic experts from physics, biology and human activities, together with the EMODnet Secretariat. The agenda included a demonstration of the latest EMODnet services, use cases of how the offshore renewable energy sector use EMODnet data and data products, and dialogues on data requirements and data sharing. A second workshop on the same topic, focusing on the Mediterranean and Black Seas will follow on 20-21 October 2022.
On 22 September the second EMODnet-Copernicus Marine Thematic workshop on Coastal issues took place, two years after the first workshop in June 2020. The meeting brought together EMODnet and Copernicus Marine Service experts together with inter-DG representation from the European Commission and CINEA. The workshop focused on dialogue between the two EU marine data services EMODnet and Copernicus Marine Service with a specific focus on the coastal area. Existing capabilities and emerging areas for collaboration across EMODnet themes and between EMODnet and Copernicus Marine were assessed, and concrete joint contributions to European (e.g. EU DTO, Green Deal) and global (UN Ocean Decade) initiatives/strategies were defined. A report will follow on the EC Maritime Forum.
In the summer, EMODnet Biology contributed to the Ocean Best Practices System (OBPS) August-22 Flash news, highlighting work towards EMODnet standards and a book published in 2022 on “Ocean Science Data” to which many EMODnet thematic Coordinators, Secretariat and wider experts contributed.
EMODnet Chemistry has provided expert input to a consultation on a new EC initiative on ‘Chemical safety – better access to chemicals data for safety assessments’. This initiative aims to improve access to chemicals data by removing technical and administrative obstacles, to make it easier to access and use all available data and will increase transparency. EMODnet is well-placed to contribute as a leading EU marine data service, with EMODnet Chemistry providing standardised, harmonised and FAIR marine water quality data, amongst other thematic areas spanning pollution, eutrophication, marine litter and more. Read more about the initiative and EMODnet Chemistry’s response in the link below.
The summary for the UN Ocean Conference (27 June to 1 July 2022) side event on “Marine Data Interoperability”, that was co-organised by the EMODnet Secretariat, is now available online. Check it out!
During the summer, EMODnet Chemistry enthusiastically participated as a tutor in various training courses and summer schools. EMODnet Chemistry Coordinator National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics - OGS (Italy) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research - AWI (Germany) participated in the training course 'Practical Introductory Course to Marine Monitoring Hardware and Procedures', held at OGS headquarters in Italy, from 20-24 June 2022, as part of the Interreg SHAREMED Mediterranean - TransNational On-Demand Actions project. The synergies between SHAREMED and EMODnet Chemistry were presented during the SHAREMED Summer School 'Tools, Databases and Knowledge to address and assess pollution and environmental threats in the Mediterranean waters' from 27 June to 1 July 2022 at IPMA - Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere, Lisbon, Portugal. The EMODnet data infrastructure was also presented at the Blue Growth Summer School "The Copernicus Marine Service as a supporting tool to foster Sustainable Blue Economy", organised by the OGS from 2 to 8 July 2022.
EMODnet Physics gave a Guest Lecture on 'Quality Control and Data Management – EMODnet: methods and tools in the global glider data exchange' at the 2022 Marine Robotics Summer School. The Summer School was an initiative jointly organized by the MIT Portugal Program (MPP), LSTS – Underwater Systems and Technology Laboratory (FEUP), and the University of Azores. It took place at Faial Island, in the Azores, between July 11 and 22. The attendees acquired expertise in marine robotics and oceanography, more specifically in applications for ocean observation, archaeology, and mapping of ecosystems.
Two citizen science digitisation projects were set up during the summer and the results are coming in. The EMODnet Biology citizen science project available through the DoeDat platform is underway. The initial project has been digitised by four citizen scientists. The data management team at VLIZ is now in the process of reformatting and quality controlling the data so that it can be published. In late August, another citizen science project was made available via the platform Zooniverse Once the work is completed by the citizen scientists, the data management team at HCMR will proceed with the reformatting and quality control ahead of data publication. Keep an eye out for further updates and more projects of this type during the coming months.