Observations in the marine environment

At the beginning of the 21st century, the environment has become an important issue in science and society.

The marine environment is particularly variable and is characterized by both natural and man-induced fluctuations at extremely different scales in space and time, from the diurnal cycle to seasonal variation and decennial fluctuations. To understand this variability, and to distinguish the natural cycles from the impact of human activities, it is necessary to collect physical, chemical, biological and anthropogenic measurements at regular intervals and over a long period of time.  This is the role of the observatories - they collect data for databases accessible to the scientific community and the socio-economic partners.

Recognized as Observatory for the Sciences of the Universe (OSU) in 2005, IUEM has a mission to perform observations on the three main domains in marine and coastal sciences: the climate and the ocean currents, geophysics in oceanic domains, and the coastal environment.

In close collaboration with other scientific partners and local authorities, IUEM teams periodically carry out series of measurements in accordance with standardized protocols permitting to analyse the evolution in the marine environment at various spatio-temporal scales, from a daily to a decennial, and from a local to a global scale.

Since June 2010, these data are accessible through the portal of IUEM's Observatory.