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*April 2008: EuroSITES Kicks Off in Vienna*

EuroSITES, the European Ocean Observatory Network, held a Kick-Off meeting in Vienna on 18th and 19th April 2008. [Download pdf]

This 3 year European FP7 project officially started on 1st April 2008 and is coordinated by NOCS and led by Dr. Richard Lampitt who explains “EuroSITES will integrate and enhance 9 existing deep (>1000m depth) ocean observatories across Europe, developing these as multidisciplinary sites linking the marine environment from the ocean interior to the seafloor and subseafloor.”

The Kick-Off meeting involved all 13 partners from across Europe and Cape Verde and many international experts in observatory science, modeling and data management which form the EuroSITES ‘Oversight Committee’. This advisory board is chaired by Dr. Holly Given, director of the NSF funded OOI (Ocean Observatories Initiative) and representative for Joint Oceanographic Institutions. The Oversight Committee will work with the EuroSITES Consortium to offer expertise and create a longer-term vision for EuroSITES, positioning European fixed-point observatories in the global picture.

Among the topics of discussion at the Kick-Off were:

• The current status and future development of fixed-point ocean observatories across Europe and
• The role of European observational research as part of a global network.

EuroSITES infrastructure will act as test beds for emerging ocean observation technology. This will include the deployment of sensor prototypes measuring key variables such as pH and deep-water oxygen consumption which are not currently measured autonomously on long-term ocean time-series.

EuroSITES data management will be led by Maureen Pagnani (NOCS) and will develop with the CORIOLIS data centre, Ifremer, France the means to process the EuroSITES  data. Standards for quality control and data dissemination, produced by OceanSITES and SEADATANET, will be used to comply with European initiatives such as the INSPIRE directive to produce a coherent data.