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The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory (EMSO) European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) provides power, communications, sensors, and data infrastructure for continuous, high-resolution, (near-)real-time, interactive ocean observations across a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary range of research areas including biology, geology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and computer science, from polar to subtropical environments, through the water column down to the abyss. Eleven deep-sea and four shallow nodes span from the Arctic through the Atlantic and Mediterranean, to the Black Sea. Coordination among the consortium nodes is being strengthened through the EMSOdev project (H2020), which will produce the EMSO Generic Instrument Module (EGIM). Early installations are now being upgraded, for example, at the Ligurian, Ionian, Azores, and Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP) nodes. Significant findings have been flowing in over the years; for example, high-frequency surface and subsurface water-column measurements of the PAP node show an increase in seawater pCO2 (from 339 μatm in 2003 to 353 μatm in 2011) with little variability in the mean air-sea CO2 flux. In the Central Eastern Atlantic, the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands open-ocean canary node (aka ESTOC station) has a long-standing time series on water column physical, biogeochemical, and acidification processes that have contributed to the assessment efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). EMSO not only brings together countries and disciplines but also allows the pooling of resources and coordination to assemble harmonized data into a comprehensive regional ocean picture, which will then be made available to researchers and stakeholders worldwide on an open and interoperable access basis.

Innovative robotic technologies are a key to study ocean processes in space and time. The work carried out during the ROBEX-Demonstration Mission on RV Polarstern will test the capability of new and innovative technologies, developed during the HGF Alliance ROBEX, in deep-sea environments. Investigations will include Arctic benthic and pelagic ecosystems strongly influenced by climate change, such as marine arctic sediments hosting gas hydrates and arctic deep-sea benthic communities. Different robotic platforms, including 3 types of crawler, glider, AUV, UAVs and senor systems (like Lab-on-a- Chip and multi-O2-profiler) are described and mission scenarios presented. The use of these new underwater technologies will improve our capabilities to improve our knowledge on the effects of climate change on the Arctic ecosystem and ocean observation.

The complexity of marine installations for ocean observing systems has grown significantly in recent years. In a network consisting of tens, hundreds or thousands of marine instruments, manual configuration and integration becomes very challenging. Simplifying the integration process in existing or newly established observing systems would benefit system operators and is important for the broader application of different sensors. This article presents an approach for the automatic configuration and integration of sensors into an interoperable Sensor Web infrastructure. First, the sensor communication model, based on OGC's SensorML standard, is utilized. It serves as a generic driver mechanism since it enables the declarative and detailed description of a sensor's protocol. Finally, we present a data acquisition architecture based on the OGC PUCK protocol that enables storage and retrieval of the SensorML document from the sensor itself, and automatic integration of sensors into an interoperable Sensor Web infrastructure. Our approach adopts Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) as alternative serialization form of XML or JSON. It solves the bandwidth problem of XML and JSON., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

The complexity of marine installations for the ocean observing systems has grown significantly in recent years. In a network consisting of tens, hundreds or thousands of marine instruments, manual configuration and integration becomes very challenging. Simplifying the integration process in existing or newly established observing systems would have benefit system operators and is important for the broader application of different sensors. This article presents an approach for the automatic configuration and integration of sensors into an interoperable Sensor Web infrastructure. First, the sensor communication model, based on OGC's SensorML standard, is utilized. It serves as a generic driver mechanism since it enables the declarative and detailed description of a sensor's protocol. Finally, we present a data acquisition architecture based on OGC PUCK protocol that enables storage and retrieval of the SensorML document from the sensor itself, and automatic integration of sensors into an interoperable Sensor Web infrastructure., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory (EMSO) European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) provides power, communications, sensors, and data infrastructure for continuous, high-resolution, (near-)real-time, interactive ocean observations across a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary range of research areas including biology, geology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and computer science, from polar to subtropical environments, through the water column down to the abyss. Eleven deep-sea and four shallow nodes span from the Arctic through the Atlantic and Mediterranean, to the Black Sea. Coordination among the consortium nodes is being strengthened through the EMSOdev project (H2020), which will produce the EMSO Generic Instrument Module (EGIM). Early installations are now being upgraded, for example, at the Ligurian, Ionian, Azores, and Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP) nodes. Significant findings have been flowing in over the years; for example, high-frequency surface and subsurface water-column measurements of the PAP node show an increase in seawater pCO2 (from 339 µatm in 2003 to 353 µatm in 2011) with little variability in the mean air-sea CO2 flux. In the Central Eastern Atlantic, the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands open-ocean canary node (aka ESTOC station) has a long-standing time series on water column physical, biogeochemical, and acidification processes that have contributed to the assessment efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). EMSO not only brings together countries and disciplines but also allows the pooling of resources and coordination to assemble harmonized data into a comprehensive regional ocean picture, which will then be made available to researchers and stakeholders worldwide on an open and interoperable access basis., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The outer Western Crimean Shelf of the Black Sea is a natural laboratory to investigate effects of stable oxic vs. varying hypoxic conditions on seafloor biogeochemical processes and benthic community structure. Bottom water oxygen concentrations varied between normoxic (175 μmol O2 L−1) and hypoxic (< 63 μmol O2 L−1) or even anoxic/sulfidic conditions within a few kilometres distance. Variations in oxygen concentrations between 160 and 10 μmol L−1 even occurred within hours close to the chemocline at 134 m water depth. Total oxygen uptake, including diffusive as well as fauna-mediated oxygen consumption, decreased from > 15 mmol m−2 d−1 in the oxic zone to < 9 mmol m−2 d−1 in the hypoxic zone, correlating with changes in macrobenthos composition. Benthic diffusive oxygen uptake rates, comprising microbial respiration plus reoxidation of inorganic products, were around 4.5 mmol m−2 d−1, but declined to 1.3 mmol m−2 d−1 at oxygen concentrations below 20 μmol L−1. Measurements and modelling of pore water profiles indicated that reoxidation of reduced compounds played only a minor role in the diffusive oxygen uptake, leaving the major fraction to aerobic degradation of organic carbon. Remineralization efficiency decreased from 100% in the oxic zone, to 50% in the oxic-hypoxic, to 10% in the hypoxic-anoxic zone. Overall the faunal remineralization rate was more important, but also more influenced by fluctuating oxygen concentrations than microbial and geochemical oxidation processes.

Version No.: 1 Date: 30. Sep 2015

The NeXOS project aims to develop new multifunctional sensor systems supporting a number of scientific, technical and societal objectives, ranging from more precise monitoring and modelling of the marine environment to an improved management of fisheries. Several sensors will be developed, based on optical and passive acoustics technologies, addressing key environmental descriptors identified by the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) for Good Environmental Status (GES). Two of the new sensors will also contribute to the European Union Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), with a focus on variables of interest to an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF). An objective is the improved cost-efficiency, from procurement to operations, via the implementation of several innovations, such as multiplatform integration, greater reliability through better antifouling management, greater sensor and data interoperability and the creation of market opportunities for European enterprises. Requirements will be further analysed for each new sensor system during the first phase of the project. Those will then be translated into engineering specifications, leading to the development phase. Sensors will then be tested, calibrated, integrated on several platform types, scientifically validated and demonstrated in the field. Translation to production and broad adoption are facilitated by participating industry. Overall, the paper presents an overview of the project objectives and plans for the next four years., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

A growing concern about the health of the world oceans resulting from multiple stressors as for instance effects of climate change and increasing offshore activities leads to the need of better observational tools and strategies. The objective of the NeXOS project is to serve those needs by developing new costeffective, innovative and compact integrated multifunctional sensor systems for ocean optics, ocean passive acoustics, and an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF), which can be deployed from mobile and fixed ocean observing platforms, as well as to develop downstream services for the Global Ocean Observing System, Good Environmental Status of European marine waters and the Common Fisheries Policy., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The complexity of installations in the oceans to carry out observations on specific processes and for detecting long-term trends have grown significantly in the past years. This applies also to the type and number of sensors that are in use in observing systems. In these days, sensors shall be compatible to different platforms that are in use like floats, gliders or moorings, and accordingly also different data acquisition systems. Facilitating the integration process in existing or newly established observing systems comes with a real benefit for the operators and is important for the broader application of different sensors. However, how to achieve the goals is under debate. The most serious obstacle for all initiatives is the willingness of stakeholders to adopt a strategy and, even more so, to adopt a specific architecture to enable interoperability across platforms and observing systems. Therefore, the situation at this point in time is characterized by the fact that parallel approaches have been developed (IEEE 1451, the OGC set of standards, etc.) that are ready to be evaluated but still lacking the support by the community. Therefore it seems to be a good time to consider and to agree on the implementation of interoperability arrangements., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

EMSO (The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory, www.emso-eu.org) is forging ahead through the next challenge in Earth-Ocean Science: How to co-ordinate ocean data acquisition, analysis and response across provincial, national, regional, and global scales. The coordination, analysis, and dissemination of ocean data continue to be a challenge across international boundaries. EMSO is a large-scale European Research Distributed Infrastructure (RI) of the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) roadmap, and is composed of fixed-point, seafloor and water-column observatories with the basic scientific objective of (near)-real-time, long-term monitoring of environmental processes across the geosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere. It is geographically distributed in key sites of European waters, from the Arctic through the Atlantic and Mediterranean, to the Black Sea. EMSO ended its Preparatory Phase, EU Framework Programme 7 (FP7) funded project in 2012, and is now in the Interim phase transitioning to the formation of the legal entity for managing the distributed infrastructure: the EMSO European Research Infrastructure Consortium (hereinafter EMSO-ERIC). A phased implementation will characterize EMSO site extension, construction and operation. Countries currently participating in EMSO are: Italy, France, Ireland, Spain, Greece, United Kingdom, Portugal, Romania, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Germany, and the Netherlands. The user community is open to all, and will be coordinated through an association called ESONET-Vi (European Seafloor Observatory NETwork ¿ The Vision), following on the extensive scientific community planning contributions of the ESONET-NoE FP6 project. The most striking characteristic of observatory design is its ability to address interdisciplinary objectives simultaneously across temporal and spatial scales. Data are collected from the surface ocean through the water column, the benthos, and the sub-se- floor.

The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory (EMSO; http://www.emso-eu.org) is addressing the next challenge in Earth-ocean science: how to coordinate data acquisition, analysis, archiving, access, and response to geohazards across provincial, national, regional, and international boundaries. Such coordination is needed to optimize the use of current and planned ocean observatory systems to (1) address national and regional public safety concerns about geohazards (e.g., earthquakes, submarine landslides, tsunamis) and (2) permit broadening of their scope toward monitoring environmental change on global ocean scales

The upper ocean, including the biologically productive euphotic zone and the mixed layer, has great relevance for studies of physical, biogeochemical, and ecosystem processes and their interaction. Observing this layer with a continuous presence, sampling many of the relevant variables, and with sufficient vertical resolution, has remained a challenge. Here a system is presented that can be deployed on the top of deep-ocean moorings, with a drive mechanism at depths of 150–200 m, which mechanically winches a large sensor float and smaller communications float tethered above it to the surface and back down again, typically twice per day for periods up to 1 year. The sensor float can carry several sizeable sensors, and it has enough buoyancy to reach the near surface and for the communications float to pierce the surface even in the presence of strong currents. The system can survive mooring blowover to 1000-m depth. The battery-powered design is made possible by using a balanced energy-conserving principle. Reliability is enhanced with a drive assembly that employs a single rotating part that has no slip rings or rotating seals. The profiling bodies can break the surface to sample the near-surface layer and to establish satellite communication for data relay or reception of new commands. An inductive pass-through mode allows communication with other mooring components throughout the water column beneath the system. A number of successful demonstration deployments have been completed.

Peer Reviewed

IEEE-1451[1] and OGC Sensor Web Enablement (OGC SWE)[2] define standard protocols to operate instruments, including methods to calibrate, configure, trigger data acquisition, and retrieve instrument data based on specified temporal and geospatial criteria. These standards also provide standard ways to describe instrument capabilities, properties, and data structures produced by the instrument. These standard operational protocols and descriptions enable observing systems to manage very diverse instruments as well as to acquire, process, and interpret their data in a uniform and automated manner. We refer to this property as “instrument interoperability”. This paper describes integration and evaluation of MBARI PUCK protocol [3] at OBSEA [4,5] in Spain., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

IEEE-1451[1] and OGC Sensor Web Enablement (OGC SWE)[2] define standard protocols to operate instruments, including methods to calibrate, configure, trigger data acquisition, and retrieve instrument data based on specified temporal and geospatial criteria. These standards also provide standard ways to describe instrument capabilities, properties, and data structures produced by the instrument. These standard operational protocols and descriptions enable observing systems to manage very diverse instruments as well as to acquire, process, and interpret their data in a uniform and automated manner. We refer to this property as “instrument interoperability”. This paper describes integration and evaluation of MBARI PUCK protocol [3] within different observatories including OBSEA [4,5] in Spain, the ESONET test-bed in Germany, and the SmartBay observatory in Canada., Peer Reviewed

IEEE-1451[1] and OGC Sensor Web Enablement (OGC SWE)[2] define standard protocols to operate instruments, including methods to calibrate, configure, trigger data acquisition, and retrieve instrument data based on specified temporal and geospatial criteria. These standards also provide standard ways to describe instrument capabilities, properties, and data structures produced by the instrument. These standard operational protocols and descriptions enable observing systems to manage very diverse instruments as well as to acquire, process, and interpret their data in a uniform and automated manner. We refer to this property as “instrument interoperability”. This paper describes integration and evaluation of MBARI PUCK protocol [3] within different observatories including OBSEA [4,5] in Spain, the ESONET test-bed in Germany, and the SmartBay observatory in Canada., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The utility and cost-effectiveness of instrument networks are enhanced by instrument interoperability. Today’s oceanographic instruments are characterized by very diverse non-standard software protocols and data formats. This diversity of protocols poses serious challenges to integration of large-scale sensor networks. Standard instrument protocols are now being developed to address these challenges. Some of these standards apply at the IP-network level and enable integration of existing “lower level” proprietary instrument protocols and software components. Other approaches are intended to be implemented by the instrument device itself. These native instrument protocol standards offer the possibility of more uniform and simpler system architectures. We compare these various approaches, describe how they can be combined with one another, and describe some prototypes that implement them., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)