Toward a European Coastal Observing Network to Provide Better Answers to Science and to Societal Challenges; The JERICO Research Infrastructure

• Published in: Frontiers in Marine Science
• Main Authors: Farcy, Patrick, Durand, Dominique, Charria, Guillaume, Painting, Suzanne J., Tamminem, Timo, Collingridge, Kate, Grémare, Antoine J., Delauney, Laurent, Puillat, Ingrid
• Other Authors: Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER), Laboratoire d'Océanographie Physique et Spatiale (LOPS), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université de Brest (UBO)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire Détection Capteurs et Mesure (LDCM), Recherches et Développements Technologiques (RDT), Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER)-Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER), European Project: 262584,EC:FP7:INFRA,FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES-2010-1,JERICO(2011), European Project: 654410,H2020,H2020-INFRAIA-2014-2015,JERICO-NEXT(2015)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2019
• Subjects: [SDU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]; [SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio]; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04202391; https://hal.science/hal-04202391/document; https://hal.science/hal-04202391/file/fmars-06-00529.pdf; https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00529

The coastal area is the most productive and dynamic environment of the world ocean, offering significant resources and services for mankind. As exemplified by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, it has a tremendous potential for innovation and growth in blue economy sectors. Due to the inherent complexity of the natural system, the answers to many scientific and societal questions are unknown, and the impacts of the cumulative stresses imposed by anthropogenic pressures (such as pollution) and climate change are difficult to assess and forecast. A major challenge for the scientific community making observations of the coastal marine environment is to integrate observations of Essential Ocean Variables for physical, biogeochemical, and biological processes on appropriate spatial and temporal scales, and in a sustained and scientifically based manner. Coastal observations are important for improving our understanding of the complex biotic and abiotic processes in many fields of research such as ecosystem science, habitat protection, and climate change impacts. They are also important for improving our understanding of the impacts of human activities such as fishing and aquaculture, and underpin risk monitoring and assessment. The observations enable us to better understand ecosystems and the societal consequences of overfishing, disease (particularly shellfish), loss of biodiversity, coastline withdrawal, and ocean acidification, amongst others. The European coastal observing infrastructure JERICO-RI, has gathered and organized key communities embracing new technologies and providing a future strategy, with recommendations on the way forward and on governance. Particularly, the JERICO community acknowledges that the main providers of coastal observations are: (1) research infrastructures, (2) national monitoring programs, and (3) monitoring activities performed by marine industries. The scope of this paper is to present some key elements of our coastal science strategy to build it on long term. It describes how ...