EO for Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive monitoring (Action 2018-2-28)
EU Member States are responsible for implementing EU regulations such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSD). Finland has developed advanced EO-based (Copernicus Sentinels) water quality related tools and practices that serve directive implementation. The objectives of this activity are to:
- Demonstrate and further advance existing national downstream applications and services especially within the Baltic Sea area but also linked to other EU member states.
- Have active dialogue with actors in the Baltic Sea region about implementing EO tools for EU regulations.
- Give suggestions for revising the regulations so that EO-based information is accepted in the directives.
SYKE has national EO-services for water quality that utilize mainly Sentinel-series instrument observations. These services are being developed further and their visual appearance and functionalities are being updated according to users definitions. The open interface TARKKA provides information on water quality and water temperature together with visual satellite true colour imagery. It provides Earth observation-based information for the national daily monitoring and reporting purposes as well as material of interest for the general public. Information is updated on daily basis and is utilized for purposes including environmental monitoring and informing public on changes or events in water quality. STATUS is an expert interface for the environmental authorities responsible for monitoring and status assessment (SYKE and regional ELY centres in Finland). It covers information from over 2200 WFD water bodies in Finland (87% of the total area) and open Baltic Sea areas in 20 km grids. STATUS provides both periodically aggregated statistics, time series and histograms of the distribution of Earth Observation and station sampling. In the framework of this project, TARKKA is being developed further with functionalities that best suit the users purposes.
SYKE arranges and participates to national and international events in advancing the use of EO for monitoring and status assessment. Presentations on the use of EO for status assessment and monitoring in Finland were held in international webinars.
Other promotion material and press contacts: In total, 7 newspaper/media articles (in Finnish) utilized Copernius Sentinel satellite observations via TARKKA service in 2020. Also, the Guardian utilised material on algae blooms in the Baltic Sea by SYKE. One video-blog to demonstrate TARKKA service was published. One on-line article in national GIS-expert journal has been written. SYKE is active in Twitter(@SYKE_EO).