Routine water quality services for the Baltic Sea (GMES MarCoast)

Abstract

The Baltic Sea is subject to various European environmental regulations which aim at securing its long-term protection. This will be achieved by the accompanying monitoring programmes associated with, for example, the HELCOM convention, the EC Water Framework Directive, the Natura 2000 Directives and the upcoming European Maritime Policy, to name the most important regulatory policies. These monitoring programmes demand large scale, frequent and accurate measurements of physical, biological and chemical parameters. GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) is a major activity of the European Union and Commission which aims at providing operational services by making the best use of spaceborne earth observation data, in-situ observations and models. MarCoast is the GMES Service Element Project addressing the marine environment and is funded by the European Space Agency. MarCoast is providing Marine and Coastal Services for international, regional and national end users. The project is driven solely by these end users, which include mainly public bodies in charge of the marine environment, such as, for example, the European Environmental Agency (EEA), the European Maritime Security Agency (EMSA) or the German Federal and Maritime Hydrographic Agency (BSH).