Programme: PRIN: PROGETTI DI RICERCA DI RILEVANTE INTERESSE NAZIONALE – Bando 2022
Project title: SEAmPhonia – An innovative enlightening approach to enable the modelling of marine ecosystems by the acoustic 3D field – Prot. 2022AWXT3K
Acronym: SEAmPhonia
Duration: dal 28/09/2023 al 28/02/2026
Project budget: € 273.540,00
ISMAR budget: € 161.357,00
Web site: https://www.ismar.cnr.it/web-content/seamphonia/
Summary: The marine environment constitutes a complex system in terms of physical, chemical and biological variables. The anthropogenic pressures impact on the status of the environment and a diversity of different agents are involved in a coupled human and natural system. Comprehensive models for the marine environment do not exist. Physical models are very advanced, including many variables and data assimilation. The outputs from these models are used to feed other models, e.g. biological ones, providing guidelines for sustainability of the use of living resources. In this context, the marine environment is embracing a variety of social and economic sectors. This has induced policy makers to address the challenge of the Good Environmental Status at legislative level too. Despite many models that can be considered state of the art, the understanding and prediction of the dynamics of the marine system are still limited. These limitations depend on the difficulty to include and assimilate inhomogeneous variables in the models, plus the linear approach used to integrate different processes measured by descriptors assumed as independent.
We propose a new approach to describe and to understand the marine system, introducing an observing strategy based on the analysis of the 3D acoustic field. This new approach is suggested by the recognition of the breakthrough in understanding the solar interior by helioseismology. We will use a matrix of sensors deployed at sea, widening the analysis from the frequency domain to the cross-spectrum of time-series (phase, coherence, wavelets, etc.). The noise contribution of different signals (sea-state, biology, anthropogenic sources, etc.) will be characterised in a well-known basin. Similar observing stations are very rare on the planet, do not adopt the data analysis we propose, are not positioned in well known areas and do not link local to global phenomena.
The project will deliver the following aspects:
- to transfer the knowledge from solar physics to enable a data analysis that will allow the identification of processes coupling physical, biological and anthropogenic aspects within the marine acoustic 3D field;
- to tailor the fibre-optic technology to marine applications;
- to equip and test a long-term observing platform in the Adriatic Sea, where a comprehensive sensing of the environment at larger scales is provided and different models provide knowledge of the basin’s properties.
- to acquire data at different geometric configurations and ecosystem regimes, integrate and compare the results based on the network of innovative acoustics sensors with the existing technology, ancillary measurements and models’ assumptions.
- to open a new line of research based on the analysis of the regime shifts in the 3D acoustic field, aiming at identifying the environmental status and supporting policy decisions.
- to design a cost-effective marine observing strategy based on acoustics.
Contact person in ISMAR: angela.pomaro@cnr.it (Principal Investigator)
Partnership:
- Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy)
- Sapienza Università di Roma (Italy)
- Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy)
