The MAARES project aims to simplify the environmental monitoring of Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows through the integration of a number of remote sensing methodologies, thus reducing the need for costly and laborious field surveys.
This is a EUR 150,000 MAARES project, co-funded by the MCST Space Fund Programme and Malta’s Ministry for the Environment, Climate Change and Planning formally kicked off earlier this week through an online meeting. Activities within MAARES, which will run till 2023, unofficially kicked off last September, through the conduction of field sampling activities.
The University of Malta, represented by Prof. Alan Deidun and Dr Adam Gauci from the Oceanography Malta Research Group of the Department of Geosciences within the Faculty of Science, is a partner within MAARES, along with the Coordinator of the project, Ambjent Malta, the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) and PIXAM Limited. The project aims to develop and test a novel methodology to complement the existing data-gathering toolbox for sea grass meadows which ultimately enables more efficient management and conservation of P. oceanica in this epoch threatened by the ever-increasing anthropogenic factors and emerging pressures such as climate change and marine litter.
MAARES will tackle one major constraint in the current approach adopted to monitor P. oceanica: the laborious and arduous tasks of mapping the extent of sea grass using in-situ techniques such as underwater surveys. Indeed, past data collection approaches, employing both in-situ and ex-situ surveys, highlighted the need to obtain higher resolution data at larger spatial scales and more frequent temporal scales to capture the different phenological stages, to enable more in-depth understanding on the geographical extent and health status of this habitat. It is expected that this approach will not only improve the fine-tuning of policy related to marine habitat conservation but will also provide Ambjent Malta and ERA with the necessary knowledge to implement applied habitat conservation initiatives in Marine Protected Areas and territorial waters of the Maltese islands.
Further information on the MCST Space Fund as well on the MAARES project can be viewed online.