INTRODUCTION AND SETTINGS

EnvEurope ("Environmental quality and pressures assessment across Europe: the LTER network as an integrated and shared system for ecosystem monitoring", www.enveurope.eu), is a Life+ project started in 2010, that gathers together 11 countries and 67 LTER sites from the LTER-Europe network (400 ca. sites). The project aims at contributing to the integration and coordination at the European level of long-term ecological research and monitoring initiatives, focused on understanding trends and changes of environmental quality, and on the elaboration of relevant detection systems and methods. The main target of the project EnvEurope is the analysis of the ecosystem status and the definition of appropriate environmental quality indicators with an integrated long-term, broad scale, cross-domain (terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and matrine ecosystems) approach, joining the efforts of 11 countries belonging to the LTER Europe network. Since parameters and methods harmonization is a major challenge for such a large network of sites, EnvEurope activity has started to provide in situ comparable measurements of selected ecological indicators suitable to evidence trends and changes on drivers, pressures, states and responses of European ecosystems. The ENVADRI2011oceanographic cruise is an objective of one of the action of the project (Action 5 'testing in the Field'). Action 5 concerns in fact the experimental phase of the project, based on the sampling in the field of new and pre-existing parameters and indicators at different level/scales of investigation. The implementation of a multi-level and multi-functional monitoring approach, allowing for the up- and down-scaling of results, is one of the keystones of the project. Thanks to the results of this action the project will contribute to a better assessment of European environmental quality, contributing to data collection for GMES (e.g. providing ground-truth data for remote sensing of ecosystem structure, productivity and status). Data will be collected having in the background the Shared Environmental Information System for Europe, in order to contribute to data sharing and publicity.

The objectives of ENVADRI2011  extend beyond those of EnvEurope and they aimed at:

• testing "in the field" of methodologies and common parameter measurements, analysis and calibration in the LTER stations
• measuring at the basin scale the optical properties of the water in order to determine the relations between water constituent concentration and the reflectance acquired above the water surface, essential for calibrating regional remote sensing algorithms

• understanding the dynamics of spring phytoplankton blooms and prokaryotic variability and their relations with environmental factors SOCAL2008, DELNEGRO2008, SOLIDORO2009, MOZETIC2009, BOLDRIN2009
• estimating the effects of biotoxicity on trophic networks and on trophodynamics of zooplankton population by direct measurements of grazing, and eggs viability and vitality, egg production, egg hatching success, fecal pellet production MIRALTO1999,IANORA2004, IANORA2008
• estimating the concentration of polyunsaturated aldheydes and other oxylipins in the particulate and dissolved phases and formulating hypotheses on their role
• estimating the rates of bacterial degradation activity and of secondary production during phytoplankton bloom
• evaluating the qualitative and quantitative modification of bacterial community during blooms

• monitoring cetaceans and jellies
• acquiring biogeochemical, oceanographical and geophysical data in the Montenegrin area in South Eastern Adriatic Sea

The operations at sea were coordinated in order to collect at every station (a) CTD data with water samples, (b) phyto and zoo-plankton organisms by net samplers, (c) optical properties measurements, and (d) bottom sampling by grabs, box-corers and gravity corers. The data set were complemented by ADCP, bathymetric and CHIRP investigation on station and on transits. A particular attention and sampling strategies were devoted to the LTER stations (Paloma, Acqua Alta, C10, S1) and to classical oceanographic transects, in particular those close to the Po River area, the Rimini, Senigallia and the Pomo MARINI2006. The on-field planning was helped by the download of the EMMA-ROMS model RUSSO2009 forecast for the investigated subareas.

The studies in the Southern Adriatic Sea in Montenegrin and Albanian waters continued the work done during several cruises performed in the framework of the ADRICOSM Project. The geological and geophysical investigations have been reported by BIGNAMI2008, MNG0109-REP, MNG0209-REP, MNG0310-REP, whereas oceanographic data and modeling have been discussed by CAMPANELLI2009, MARINI2010, BELLAFIORE2011.

During the cruise a maintanance and QC work for the E1 and S1 buoys BORTOLUZZI2006 was performed.

We may cite the AREG and AdriaROMS (a POM modified model run by INGV, in the framework of the MFSTEP/MFS/MOON Projects, and an operational implementation of ROMS run by SIMC-ARPA-Emilia Romagna, respectively; PINARDI2010, CHIGGIATO2008 ) and another Adriatic operational implementation of ROMS with biogeochemical model (developed in the framework of the EU’s EMMA LIFE Project and run by DIMSR-UNIVPM, RUSSO2009).

Figure 7: Adriatic Sea setting.