Manual of Best Monitoring Practice. EMMA, first deliverable, task 2

EMMA is a Technology Transfer project (Environmental Management through Monitoring and modelling of Anoxia). The overall objective of EMMA project is the exploitation of scientific results and translation into a local integrated strategy for improving the environmental quality, by reducing the environmental and socio-economic impact of hypoxic and/or anoxic seasonal events in the marine and coastal zones of the North Adriatic Sea. One of the main goals of the project and the general goal of Task 2 is a careful planning and building of a monitoring system, able to record the key parameters of the main processes leading to potentially hypoxic and/or anoxic conditions of bottom waters and in the sea floor. An early - warning forecasting system based on acquisition of monitored parameters will be designed, implemented and tested. It will be based on a model able to predict the evolutionary trend of environment within 72 hours and will be tailored, a much as possible, on needs of local partners. Task 2 activities include editing of both a "manual for best monitoring practice" (first deliverable) and a "manual for design of the monitoring system" (second deliverable), which describe respectively : o The analysis of the specific local constrains, of the needs of the local decision makers and socio-economic operators, in order to build a final monitoring system which is able to meet their real needs. o The optimisation of the costal monitoring network, by means of analysis of the existing network and their eventual integration (new monitoring stations and data transmission systems) in order to reach the goals of EMMA project. The final goal of this "manual" is to evidence which environmental signs should be noticed when the ecosystem is approaching early phase of an hypoxia/anoxia event, also in order to foresee the phenomena and to act prevention from it or minimization of its negative effects. The manual aims at realizing its goal by collecting wide scientific knowledge and all the information about local zone, necessary for a careful planning of the forecasting system and for management of the emergency. The second deliverable, which will be edited by the next six months, will define in more detail the characteristics of monitoring network which are necessary to run the forecasting system. Initial chapters of this deliverable summarize causes and features of hypoxia/anoxia phenomena and their main consequences on the marine environment. These phenomena are described both in general features and in the more specific case of the Northern Adriatic basin, the Emilia- Romagna coast and the coast of Rimini Municipality. The following chapters concern the local problems of Rimini coast, the needs local decision makers and economical operators. This study also point out the significant economical impact that anoxia events have on the main local economical activities and resources. Nearly exhaustive information on existing monitoring networks has been collected, together with other data (urban sewage, fish and mussels farming ...) that could be useful for planning the forecasting system and for environmental management in case of anoxic events. In addition, monitoring experience from the Marine Biology Station of Piran has been gathered. It deals with the Slovenian part of Gulf of Trieste. A fixed buoy, equipped with an automatic data acquisition system, has been also used there for measuring main oceanographic parameters. This deliverable ends with an analysis of the different meteorological, physical, chemical, biological and geological parameters which has been used in these previous studies, in order to detect the most useful for the forecast modelling and management of anoxic and hypoxic events in the frame of EMMA project.