The University of Malta’s Physical Oceanography Research Group is currently involved in the Watercolours project, which is exploiting the use of satellite imagery to estimate water quality parameters in the Malta Channel – the stretch of sea that divides our archipelago from Sicily – with a focus on the area around the Maltese islands.

Remotely-sensed satellite data are increasingly becoming an essential resource in applications to improve the quality of life and safety of society, for risk assessment, environmental monitoring, surveillance, scientific discovery as well as economic exploitation.

The main aim is to generate high-resolution maps that show as different colours the environmental condition of the water in this area. The initiative will also promote capacity- building, increase the use of satellite datasets to monitor and manage the marine and coastal environment around Malta, as well as highlight the island’s stronger presence in the European space sector.

The first phase of the project that is nearing completion focused on calculating the occurrence and variation over time of surface Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentrations and total suspended matter (TSM).

Apart from identifying the general trends of these parameters, the results will provide an important indication of eutrophication as well as suspended sediment loading or depletion areas.

This was possible through the processing of 10 years of data captured between 2002 and 2012 by the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) sensor aboard the European Space Agency’s Envisat-1 research satellite.

The merging of the long time-series allowed the generation of high-quality climatologies that show how Chl-a and TSM vary on a daily, weekly and monthly basis without the limitations observed in the raw data caused mainly due to atmospheric phenomena.

The project’s second phase will focus on the operational computation of satellite data products at an unprecedented quality and resolution. This will be carried out by using the data from the Sentinel 3A and 3B satellites which were launched in February 2016 and April 2018 respectively.

Chlorophyll-a concentrations by satellite Sentinel 3B captured on August 16, 2020, showing high primary production in the southeast part of the island.

Although these datasets are being used extensively to estimate Chlorophyll-a and TSM in Europeans waters for coastal management and research purposes, our main aim is to significantly improve the quality of the outputs and make them more suited to the Water Framework Directive (WFD) as well as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).

The satellite data products will be calibrated and validated using field measurements that will be obtained from dedicated field surveys to be carried out in the coming months around Malta, Pozzallo and Lampedusa.

For this activity, the team from the Physical Oceanography Research Group will be working with experts from the Institute of Marine Sciences at the Italian National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) to collect and analyse the measurements.

Subsequently, all the data generated in this project will be uploaded to an online portal. This will enable the near real-time publishing and visualisation of the targeted data products, thereby enabling scientists and other stakeholders, such as fishermen and local environmental agencies, to make informed decisions regarding the use and management of the marine resources.

The user interface will be powered with artificial intelligence to enable the continuous monitoring and detection of the changes in water quality parameters. This is essential also from the perspective of identifying and monitoring isolated events of increased suspended sediments triggered by heavy rainfall or development activities as well as sudden appearances of algal blooms in the Maltese waters.

The Watercolours project is funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology, for and on behalf of the Foun­dation for Science and Technology, through the Space Research Fund. The project is coordinated by Dr Adam Gauci and Prof. Aldo Drago with the support of Dr Ankita Misra from the Physical Oceanography Research Group.

For more information on the project visit the website below.

https://watercolours.capemalta.net