Sustained monitoring of seas and oceans using ships of opportunity. What are FerryBoxes and how are they being used. What we are doing in Europe.

报告人：David Hydes教授 英国南安普敦大学国家海洋中心

时间：10月20日（星期一） 15:00-16:30

地点：曾呈奎楼B-206

报告摘要：

In order to detect environmental change and to identify its causes we require data spanning an extraordinary range of spatial and temporal scales that cannot be obtained without a long-term in-situ presence in our seas and oceans. To achieve the infrastructure needed for sustained measurements over decades requires novel approaches both at a political and scientific level. One such approach is the use of instrumentation on ships of opportunity that can be used autonomously. By developing collaborations between the shipping industry and the research community cost effective data collection can be achieved and oceanographers can measure what is actually happening now in our oceans, seas and lakes on a day to day basis. Such information is essential if we are to really understand and quantify both the causes and effects of our Earth’s changing climate.

Europe is leading the way with over 30 systems installed. The scale of operations varies greatly in terms of the size and speed of ships used to the length routes covered from global to less than 10km. Work started in the Baltic in the late 1990s at the Finnish Institute of Marine Research. Routes are now also running across the North Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and around the globe. Sensors systems installed on the ships collect the data and satellite communications system send the numbers ashore for assessment. Sensor systems are supplemented by the collection of water samples for calibration of the sensors and for measurements of parameters that cannot yet be measured automatically on the ship.

In Europe development of the so called FerryBox approach arose through the initiatives to develop EuroGOOS (www.eurogoos.org ). The name “FerryBox” was invented by Nick Fleming who was the first director of the EuroGOOS project. Nick realised that if a fraction of the 800 ferry ships working in Europe could have boxes of measuring devised installed a major boost could be given to the collection of marine data in a highly cost effective way. The value of this data would be enhanced where data from two or more ferries could be used together to provide data for the boundary conditions of numerical models boxing in an area of sea. The concept was further developed in an EU Science Framework 5 project called “FerryBox”. This project ran from 2002 to 2005. Work on 8 FerryBox lines successfully proved the practicality of the concept (for a copy of the EuroGOOS report go to http://www.eurogoos.org/publications/FerryBoxlow.pdf). The next stage for this work is the linkage of measurements made by FerryBoxes into integrated trans national monitoring systems such as that being developed for the North Sea (http://www.cefas.co.uk/projects/towards-a-european-marine-ecosystem-observatory-(emeco)/components-of-emeco.aspx).