News and announcements

03 February 2012 — Norther offshore wind farm receives environmental permit

Norther received the environmental permit for the offshore wind farm south east of the Thorntonbank. The decision has been signed by secretary of State for Environment and Energy, mr Wathelet. Together with the permit, MUMM developed a plan to monitor all possible impacts of the wind farm on the marine environment during the following years.

With a capacity of 258 to 420 megawatt, the Norther farm will deliver energy to 230.000 to 430,000 households. The wind farm is located at a distance of 21 from the coast of Zeebrugge. The park will be built in water of 14 to 30 metres deep and the turbines will be installed in an area of 44 km² in size.

Construction of the wind farm will start in 2014. The wind farm will start delivering electricity by the beginning of 2015.

Ministerial order, Appendix 1, Appendix 2, Appendix 3

Map of wind farms

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20 January 2012 — New results from the world’s first geostationary ocean colour satellite sensor

MUMM has being using satellite “ocean colour” imagery for a number of years now to monitor aspects of coastal water quality such as chlorophyll concentration (a measure of microscopic algae). We receive an image about once a day from the ENVISAT/MERIS satellite/sensor of the European Space Agency and from the AQUA/MODIS satellite/sensor of the NASA. But if the weather is cloudy at the time of the satellite overpass then there is no data. This is the biggest problem with the practical use of satellite “ocean colour” imagery and the number of usable satellite images per year is about 35-40 for Belgian waters. So how can this be improved?

The answer lies in the use of satellites in a geostationary rather than a polar orbit. Polar orbiters such as Envisat and Aqua rotate around the earth from above the North pole to the South pole (looking down at the sunny, day-time side of the earth) and back up to the North pole (on the dark, night-time side). As the earth rotates on its own axis, this allows a global map of the earth’s surface to be imaged in typically a single day ... for regions that are not cloudy.

Geostationary satellites are positioned above the earth’s Equator and rotate around the same axis as the earth and at exactly the same speed. In this way they can be pointed permanently at the same point on earth. Instead of seeing the whole earth in a single day, they see always the same side of the earth, but they can do this many times during the day. By taking an image every hour, instead of once per day as for the polar orbiters, a geostationary sensor can make measurements before or after clouds pass over. This should about double the number of days per year where we can map chlorophyll in Belgian waters. Additionally, on cloud-free days it will be possible to follow fast-changing processes such as tidally-driven sediment plumes which cannot be followed by once per day data from polar orbiters. For marine scientists using this data it will be an enormous progress in our ability to monitor the oceans.

While geostationary satellites are common for telecommunications and meteorology (e.g. METEOSAT) they had never before been used for ocean colour, because of the difficulties of reaching very stringent accuracy requirements from this much higher orbit. A feasibility study made by MUMM based on data from a meteorological satellite showed some of the potential for the use of geostationary sensors for oceanography. The full potential is now becoming clear as data becomes available from the Korean GOCI sensor, the world’s first geostationary sensor designed for ocean colour applications. At the GOCI workshop held in South Korea last week (11-13th January 2012) MUMM and other research teams showed the first data from this sensor, which produces hourly maps of chlorophyll and suspended matter over the Korea/China/Japan sea region. The potential and feasibility of geostationary ocean colour sensors is now fully established!

Images of the Bohai Sea (China) on 12th June 2011 every hour from 00:16 to 07:16 UTC captured by the GOCI sensor. Clouds are white, water is blue or green according to turbidity, atmospheric haze is transparent white. Data courtesy of KOSC, processing by MUMM and State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, China.

The only problem is that we will have to wait still many years before such a sensor is available for Europe. Scientists in Europe and the US are following closely the developments of GOCI so that we can learn from this experience when designing future sensors for our regions.

Interestingly for MUMM, one of our former researchers, Dr Youngje Park, is now a leading researcher in the GOCI team at the Korean Ocean Satellite Center and so at the heart of these exciting new developments. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Youngje and his colleagues in the GOCI team over the coming years.

MUMM’s research into geostationary ocean colour sensors is funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office STEREO programme via the GEOCOLOUR (SR/00/139) project.

MUMM’s research into optical remote sensing

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06 January 2012 — Stranding of a dead Kemp’s ridley sea turtle

The storms of the past few days resulted in some special strandings including a dead small turtle. The animal, a very fresh Kemp’s ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys kempii), was found by an alert beachcomber on the beach of Koksijde. The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle is the smallest and most endangered sea turtle species in the world, normally living in the Gulf of Mexico and strandings are extremely rare in Europe.

The young animal had a carapace length of 25 cm. It takes about 1,5 to 2 years (up to 4 years) for these turtles to grow to a shield length of 20 cm. The carapace of an adult Kemp’s ridley sea turtle can measure up to a length of 65 cm.

Most strandings in the northern part of Europe are of young animals that are adrift, and most strandings occur in autumn and winter. When it is too cold, at a temperature of 13° C, the animals become inactive and then they float; when the cold period lasts too long they die.

This is the first stranding of a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle on the Belgian coast. On Dutch beaches a total of five specimens have stranded in the past, the last one on December 12, 2011 when a live specimen stranded on the beach of Monster (South Holland). In Le Touquet (France) another specimen has been found on 4 January 2012.

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20 December 2011 — Mass-specific beam attenuation and backscattering

The work of Griet Neukermans in collaboration with the Laboratoire d’Océanologie et de Géosciences (Wimereux) on in situ variability of mass-specific beam attenuation and backscattering of marine particles was recently published in Limnology and Oceanography. This study analyses the link between scattering properties and dry mass concentration of suspended particles based on an extensive in situ dataset from coastal and offshore waters. The variability in mass-normalised particulate attenuation and backscattering coefficients at a wavelength of 650 nm is investigated with respect to bulk particle size, apparent density, and composition for the first time.

It is shown that the mass-specific particulate attenuation coefficient varies over one order of magnitude and is strongly driven by particle apparent density, while the mass-specific particulate backscattering coefficient is relatively well constrained and is well correlated with particle composition. Overall, this study offers new insight into the sources of optical variability in natural waters and contributes to the in situ monitoring of suspended particles and the development of remote sensing algorithms for suspended particulate matter concentration.

Publication

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09 December 2011 — Satellite mapping in the North Sea and in other parts of the world?

MUMM’s Remote Sensing and Ecosystem Modelling (REMSEM) team has developed methods for satellite mapping of phytoplankton and turbidity (the “haziness” of water) in the North Sea for use in marine science and environmental management applications. Is it possible to use the same methods in a very different part of the world? That is the question that Ana Dogliotti, a researcher from the Instituto de Astronomia y Fisica des Espacio (IAFE) in Argentina, set out to explore in a one-year postdoctoral visit to MUMM funded by a mobility grant from the Belgian Science Policy Office and the European Commission.

Ana’s research has shown that, while the same basic theories and calibrations can be used for satellite mapping applications in both the North Sea and the La Plata Estuary of Argentina, it is necessary to adapt the wavelengths used as the water goes from turbid (Belgian waters) to extremely turbid (La Plata). Instead of using the visible wavelengths, blue/green/red, typically used by satellites (and humans!) to look at the sea, it is necessary to detect light at near infrared and even short wave infrared wavelengths when the water is so heavily loaded with particles. This research enables satellite mapping techniques developed originally for the North Sea to now be applied in new regions such as the world’s largest river estuaries and plumes (e.g. La Plata, Gironde, Cháng Jiāng, Amazon, etc.) as well as many inland waters.

This Figure shows (on the left) a satellite map, about 300km*300km, of the Rio de La Plata estuary between Argentina and Uruguay. On the right is the turbidity map that has been calculated from the satellite data using the new methodology developed during this visit. The red area shows extremely turbid water, where there are so many particles in the water that it is not possible to see more than a few centimetres underwater.

Now that these methods work for La Plata Estuary, the next step is to use the satellite maps, for example to understand how fish larvae may take advantage of turbid waters to “hide” from predators. More news on that next year ... ?

The full scientific report of this research project

MUMM’s REMSEM team

The methods developed for the North Sea in the BELSPO funded BELCOLOUR project

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