S9.2.2 - Ecosystem health in the North Sea

This work package addresses 'Ecosystem Health in the North Sea', intended for decision makers concerned with monitoring and predicting the health of marine ecosystems - for example whether there is a risk of algal bloom, poor water quality, or danger to marine organisms. The information provided is past, present and forecast ocean information from the UK Met Office Shelf-Seas physical and ecosystem numerical model (which is called MRCS-ERSEM), together with ocean measurements from several fixed and moving platforms. These include:

• SmartBuoys operated by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science
• Ferrybox systems operated by the UK National Oceanography Centre, and the Norwegian Institute for Water Research
• Fixed platforms that contribute observations to EuroGOOS, through the SEPRISE project

Other observations are to be included during the demonstration phase. Standards based data services have been used where possible: Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Services for maps, Web Feature Service for observations, and THREDDS OpenDAP for gridded data. This addresses another aim of the project: to provide interoperable systems that can be combined for different uses and in different regions.

User requirements were captured for S9.2.2 Ecosystem Health in the North Sea and S9.2.8 Environmental Status Support to North Sea Fisheries Assessment, from interviews conducted with users and experts. A single requirements capture exercise covered both applications, since the users were able to offer expertise on both and the main input dataset (UK Met Office physical-ecosystem shelf seas model) is the same. The differences in requirement between the two systems are reflected in the two web portals.

• Temperature, salinity and chlorophyll most important, followed by algal occurences.
• Waves, wind and currents also useful for fisheries.

• Maps of surface and bottom fields and anomalies, and surface-bottom difference as a familiar proxy for stratification.

• Time series.

• Daily for ecosystem health, past data plus five day forecast where available.
• Monthly means for fisheries.

• Whole MRCS domain fine for Ecosystem Health – DESS provides full flexibility for region and zoom
• Subregions useful for fisheries - ICES regions are a good choice.

• 6km model resolution adequate for open water applications but may be insufficient for very-near-coast applications.

The system will contain the following information

• Ecosystem information from Met Office Medium Resolution Continental Shelf - European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (MRCS-ERSEM), plus near real time ecosystem observations (Smartbuoys, Ferrybox, coastal monitoring stations, others)
• Forecast and hindcast information from model and observations, plus model quality assessment by comparison

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