Implementation of Copernicus Downstream Products for Monitoring of Bathing and Shellfish Waters and Piloting User Uptake

The objective of this action is to establish an operational service of integrated model-observations products for the monitoring and forecasting of the state of the marine coastal environment with a focus on the diffusion of plumes related to potential hazards for bathing and shellfish waters. The service will take advantage of modelling tools developed in the CADEAU project (CMEMS Demonstration Coastal – MEDSEA 32-DEM2-L5), improving them to provide a real time monitoring and short-term forecasting system. The new implementation includes the analysis of case studies for bathing and shellfish waters. Furthermore, a workshop will support the user uptake of the new downstream service for local-scale issues and specific needs. This event aims at improving and facilitating the dialogue between all the national end-users and enterprise community members. Public sector and LRA will benefit from the results within the implementation of national and EU policies (e.g. WFD, MSFD, MSP, BWD) as well as the shellfish industry to improve sustainability and quality of productions.

The high-resolution implementation of the MITgcm-BFM coupled model developed in the CADEAU project proved to be an efficient tool to downscale the CMEMS products in the Northern Adriatic. The service will be improved with forecasting capabilities, consisting of a current-state analysis and short-term (2-3 days) forecast reporting the marine environmental state and the water quality parameters. The system output will consist of the following products: concentration and dynamics of nutrients (high-resolution surface fields of nutrients), indexes of eutrophication (biomass of producers and TRIX index), dynamics and characteristics of water currents and biogeochemistry at the regional scale.

Two case studies will focus on important shellfish production areas: Chioggia (for mussels) and Goro (for Japanese clams). In particular, tools for monitoring environmental quality and risk of eutrophication and faecal pollution of shellfish production areas will be developed and tested with selected SMEs. Satellite observations and models will be supported by in situ data. A further specific case study will be carried out to evaluate the potential bacterial pollution impact on bathing waters at a higher spatial resolution (about 10 m). This will simulate the diffusion of plumes from coastal sources, taking into account the hydrodynamic processes at a smaller scale and the interaction with coastal structures and waves.

A workshop will be organized in Italy at national scale to demonstrate the potentiality of the full chain of downstream products at the different spatial scales.