ESSO - Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services
(An Autonomous Body under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India)
Call for Project Proposals
Under
Coastal Monitoring (CM)
Background
The human impacts on the coastal ocean in terms of pollution and waste disposals have greatly modified the fluxes of material to the coastal waters. It has already been noticed that nutrients load to the coastal ocean is increasing since past three decades in the South East Asia. Natural processes such as monsoonal winds, fresh water fluxes from rivers and seasonally reversing currents, though have significant intra, inter-annual and decadal variations, add to these anthropogenic perturbations and often magnify them. Despite this the Indian coastal region remains largely unexplored and our understanding on this aspect is still primitive. According to an estimate over 400 coastal sites spread, all over the world is experiencing eutrophication and associated coastal hypoxia. The coastal hypoxia along eastern Bay of Bengal has also reportedly intensified in the past few decades. It is, therefore, imperative to monitor various biogeochemical properties over a longer period of time to assess the change and understand the processes responsible for the observed change. At present the Indian Coastal waters do not have reliable time series data to interpret and quantify the changes that might occur due to the anthropogenic activities. To overcome this shortcoming, a comprehensive coastal observation plan has been chalked out which aims to establish Marine Observation System Along Indian Coast (Coastal Monitoring by INCOIS). Coastal Monitoring programme aims to establish six sustained coastal buoy-based automated observatories (Okha/Veraval, Goa/Karwar, Kochi, Chennai, Visakhapatnam and Digha). In addition CMI also aims to assess the influx of effluents from estuary (Mahanadi) to the coastal ecosystem. The collected data will also be used to monitor water quality parameters, develop understanding of coastal processes, assess the health of the coastal and estuarine waters, model validation, assimilation and forecasting of water quality parameters. The proposed coastal observatory will be in the form of moored buoys housing multiple sensors for meteorological, physical and water quality parameters with real-time data transmission facility. Monthly in-situ sampling will also be carried out at the buoy location to ensure the quality of the sensor data.
INCOIS has also developed in-house modeling and assimilation capabilities during the recent past and has been using this capability to provide ocean state forecast to coastal population and sea-farers. Taking it further, high resolution coastal multi-component biogeochemical model will be set up in phased manner for each buoy location and then extended to cover the entire coastline. Data generated through CMI will be used for the validation of these models. Data will also be assimilated in the models to generate better water quality forecasts for coastal waters.