Enhancements of seafloor observatories and applications for natural hazard assessment and environmental monitoring

Abstract

The final target of the MONSOON project (MONitoraggio SOttOmariNo for environmental and energetic purposes) is to build up a prototype of a new generation of seafloor observatory for which specific technological developments in terms of power consumption reduction, new data logger and new sensors have been planned. The project is carried out in the main frame of the wide range of scientific and technological activities developed by EMSO Research Infrastructure (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory, www.emsoeu.org). The new seafloor observatory is planned to operate either in stand-alone and real-time modes. The latter is possible with the connection to a surface buoy able to 1) provide (via modem) an internet connection to the sea-floor system and 2) communicate with the sea-floor observatory. The observatory is planned to be deployed down to a water depth of 2000m, even in an extreme marine environment, with the presence of hydrothermal vents. All the newly developed components of the observatory have been planned and laboratory-tested. In cooperation with the University of Malta a special activity is carried out to find out technical solutions for the detection of body and surface seismic waves and for the integration of specific seismic sensors into the multidisciplinary seafloor observatory. The purpose of that activity is the integration of a seismic sensor (either a short period or a broad band seismometer) in the same data acquisition system that manages the whole observatory in order to make the observatory able to be used in studies and monitoring activities in the georisks field. After a successful laboratory testing activity, experiments in a selected, real environment are planned. [excerpt]