Developments of next generation of seafloor observatories in MARsite project

The development of new generation of autonomous sea-floor observatories is among the aims of the EC supersite project MARsite (MARMARA Supersite; FP7 EC-funded project, grant n° 308417). An approach based on multiparameter seafloor observatories is considered of basic importance to better understand the role of the fluids in an active tectonic system and their behaviour during the development of the seismogenesis. To continuously collect geochemical and geophysical data from the immediate vicinity of the submerged North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) is one of the possibilities to contribute to the seismic hazard minimization of the Marmara area. The activity is carried out combining together either the experience got after years of investigating fluids and their interactions with the seafloor and tectonic structures and the long-term experience on the development and management of permanent seafloor observatories in the main frame of the EMSO (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory, www.emso-eu.org) Research Infrastructure. The planning of next generation of seafloor observatories for geo-hazard monitoring is a task in one of the MARsite Work Packages (WP8). The new generation of seafloor observatories have to support the observation of both slow and quick variations, thus allow collecting low and high-frequency signals besides the storage of long-term dataset and/or enable the near-real-time mode data transmission.