International cooperation in the context of Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Imager (OLCI) validation studies over lake ecosystems (INCIS-3IVE)

Water is vital for the existence of life on Earth. Lake and reservoirs contain something like 85% of all freshwater on Earth and as such any deterioration in the health of these systems can have profound effects on human society as well as the wider environment. Lakes are very dynamic environments and their health depends on many complex interactions between physical, chemical and biological processes. Lakes are also very sensitive systems and they respond rapidly to changes in our climate and also to the way we manage our lands. It's really important that we are able to measure the condition of lakes around the world and understand how they are changing as a result of human activities. However, this is no easy task. There are over 300 million lakes on Earth and they are scattered across the landscape and often in very remote and inaccessible locations. We simply do not have the financial or human resources to be able to monitor the health of all these lakes. In fact, we currently only monitor something like less than 0.00003% of all lakes and reservoirs on Earth.

This a real challenge for lake scientists at the moment. One way of potentially meeting this challenge is to use satellites orbiting the Earth to make measurements of lake water quality. Satellites allow us to observe large areas on the Earth at any one time and they can provide these observations on a very frequent basis. This makes them ideal for assessing changes in lakes. However, the use of satellite observations for lake monitoring is technically challenging and we have only recently started to develop these techniques in a serious manner. In the next few years, the European Space Agency will be launching a series of new satellites called the Copernicus Sentinels. These satellites are being specifically designed for monitoring our environment, including the health of lakes and other inland waters. To get the very best of these new satellite sensors, there is an urgent need to bring together worldwide experts to work on the development of tools for extracting information on the status of lakes from the raw satellite observations.

The purpose of this project is to bring together Europe's leading scientific teams with interests in the use of satellite sensors for lake monitoring and to get them working together on common challenges. In particular, the teams will be tasked with working out how better to relate satellite observations to measurements made on the ground. These are very technical considerations but are vitally important if we are to use satellite observations in the correct way. This project will exploit a rare opportunity to make use of some world-class research facilities and instruments in other countries. This will greatly benefit scientists in the UK and ensure they remain in a position to lead future developments in the field and contribute to the social and economic well-being of our wider society. Ultimately, we anticipate that in the very near future satellite technology will allow scientists to answer fundamental questions about how lakes are responding to changes in our climate and understand the implications of these changes for the wider environment and human society.

The principal academic beneficiaries of the INCIS-3IVE (International cooperation in the context of Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Imager (OLCI) validation studies over lake ecosystems) project include the inland water and marine ocean colour remote sensing community. Details of these benefits and the mechanisms through which they will be realised are detailed further in the 'Academic Beneficiaries' section.

In addition, the project will have substantive impacts on non-academic organisations including public sector bodies and private-sector industries. Many of these benefits will ultimately be realised through the added value that this project brings to the larger GloboLakes project. The project will have benefits for the UK environmental regulators, namely the Environment Agency (EA), the Scottish Protection Agency (SEPA), and Natural Resources Wales (NRW), who have statutory responsibilities to monitor and protect the quality of surface waters in the UK, and for the various UK water utility companies. The purpose of INCIS-3IVE, and the wider GloboLakes project, is to develop the science underpinning the application satellite remote sensing to the monitoring and assessment of water quality in lakes and reservoirs. The operationalization of this technology will lead to significant economic benefits for these organisations as it would provide more frequent and much greater geographic coverage of monitoring at a lower cost. The lead-PI on INCIS-3IVE has close collaborative links with the EA and SEPA, having recently completed the EA-funded Algal Blooms Pilot Project, They are both also represented on the Management Committee for GloboLakes.

More indirectly, the project is of benefit to other organisations and individuals who manage public access to surface waters as the realisation of operational near-real time satellite monitoring would lead to more rapid dissemination of water quality information and more accurate warnings of potentially harmful algal blooms and associated health risks to the public and livestock. This includes relevant National Park authorities (Lake District, Loch Lomond & Trossachs, the Broads Authority) and public health authorities. Beneficiaries include companies that provide commercial products and services derived from Earth observation data. In the case of INCIS-3IVE, this includes organisations such as Brockmann Consult (Germany), Brockmann Geomatics (Sweden), Water Insight (The Netherlands) and EoMAP (Germany), as examples of private sector companies providing satellite-based water quality services for lakes. All these companies are currently developing new services for Sentinel-3 and have collaborative links with the lead-PI through the GloboLakes, FP7 INFORM and INCIS-3IVE projects. It is also expected that through the links between NERC Earth Observation Data Centre, PML and CEMS (Climate and Environmental Monitoring from Space) via the Satellite Applications Catapult (sa.catapult.org.uk) the results of the research could be exploited by the UK private sector.

Publicity and wider dissemination of the project outcomes will be achieved through the existing GloboLakes project including the dedicated website (www.globolakes.ac.uk) which provides both non-technical information aimed at the general public as well as information for a scientific audience. More targeted dissemination will be supported by the Communications and Media Department at University of Stirling, working alongside those of the international partners. We anticipate regular publications in popular press and (this already includes articles for BBC News and the Freshwater Matters magazine published by the UK Freshwater Biological Association) high impact peer-reviewed scientific journals throughout the lifetime of the project. We will continue to produce regular project newsletters sent to key users with responsibilities or interests in monitoring the state of the environment (e.g. DEFRA, UK conservation agencies).