Symposium on Remote Sensing for Resources Development and Environmental Management / Enschede / August 1986 
699 
The JRC program for marine coastal monitoring 
J.A.Bekkering 
Joint Research Centre, Ispra (Varese), Italy 
ABSTRACT: An overview is given of the result of the JRC activity "Coastal Transport of Pollution", since its 
start in 1980. It covers essentially RS from space, in-situ measurements and modeling relative to its main 
test site, the Northern Adriatic Sea. The activity is strongly based on a collaboration with institutes and 
organizations of the EC member-states. For the near-future the CTP envisages to extend its collaboration, in 
particular concerning the modeling effort. 
INTRODUCTION 
Since 1976 the JRC , together with many national 
institutions, is engaged in an effort to investigate 
the possibilities to monitor the marine ambience from 
space. The effort started in the wake of the 
Barcelona Convention of 1975 ,which was organized by 
the UNO to favor an international collaboration to 
limit and reduce the disastrously increasing 
pollution in the Mediterranean basin. 
The first major enterprise of the activity was the 
EURASEP OCS Experiment, held in the North Sea in 
1977, and essentially meant as a simulation 
experiment for the CZCS, to be launched in 1978. 
In 1980, in the frame of the new multiannual 
research program of the JRC, the activity has been 
baptised "Coastal Transport of Pollutant" (CTP) and 
its scope has been redefined. For practical reasons, 
mainly based on meteorological conditions and on its 
vicinity to the JRC ,the Northern Adriatic sea has 
been selected as the main test site. 
Eversince the objective of this Communitarian 
activity has been to collaborate on the development 
of an operative system, based mainly on RS from 
space, capable of monitoring and forecasting major 
marine events in coastal area's, like plankton 
production, algae blooms, transport, transformation 
and degradation of pollutants and nutrients, 
sedimentation and resuspension of suspended matter, 
etc. 
The system is meant as an aid to the management of 
marine resources and environment. Presently the 
activity is stil confined to the Adriatic sea and up 
to now only spaceborne sensors operating in the 
visible and IR are evaluated. 
The CTP activity is engaged in a continuous effort 
to get as many national institutions as possible 
collaborating or participating in the project. 
The collaboration can have many different forms, but 
roughly 3 main forms can be distinguished: 
- concerted action, in which the action has been 
agreed between the partners, but each is 
responsible for his own part, technically and 
financially, 
- shared cost, in which the JRC bears a part of the 
cost sustained by one of the partners, essentially 
meant as an encouragement to start the action or to 
adapt it to a common goal, 
- contract, in which the JRC bears the full cost and 
just acquires the service or the product. 
The activity has 3 major branches : 
- Remote Sensing from space, 
- Continous and discontinuous in-situ measurements, 
- A computer run model 
The JRC personnel involved in the CTP is around 13 
man.year/year and the activity is roughly subdivided 
as follows : 
- Development of procedures and algorithms for the 
processing of spaceborn sensor data : B.Sturm, 
S.Tassan 
- Biological and optical in-situ measurements, data 
elaboration and evaluation : P.Schlittenhardt, 
M.Ooms 
- Atmospheric mearurements and evaluation : 
G.Maracci 
- Chemical measurements and evaluation : G.Ferrari 
- Management of the activity CTP : J.A.Bekkering 
The image processing software has been developed in a 
joint effort with the activities involved in land 
application of RS , and special reference is made 
here to 
- System management of the image processing facility: 
B.Dorpema 
- Coordination of application software development: 
W.Mehl 
A part of the work has been executed by persons or 
institutions outside the JRC; whenever the case they 
will be quoted together with the description of the 
work 
SPACE BORN SENSORS 
-Nimbus 7 - CZCS 
For completeness the most salient characteristics of 
the CZCS are listed in table 1, and the spectral 
ranges are indicated in figure 1. 
A fundamental problem with marine application of RS 
is the fact that so few radiation is reflected out ot 
the water. 
Even on a clear bright day only some 20% of the 
radiation arriving at the sensor originates from the 
Table 1 
The most salient characteristics of used sensors 
Sensor 
CZCS 
AVHRR(4) 
AVHRR(5) 
TM 
Satellite 
Nimbus 7 
NOAA 6 
NOAA 9 
Landsat 5 
height 
950 
833 
870 
709 km 
inclination 
99.24 
98.74 
98.90 
98.25 dgr 
equat time 
11.50 (n) 
7.30 (s) 
14.30 (n) 
9.45 (s) 
pixel leng. 
800 
1100 
1100 
30 m 
width 
800 
800 
800 
30 m 
swath 
1400 
2400 
2400 
180 km 
daily cov. 
.5 
.8 
.8 
.07 
launch 
24.10.78 
27.6.79 
8.11.84 
5.3.82 
(n)= North bound