Coastal Monitoring Station of Barcelona (Estació Litoral de Barcelona, ELB):

 
The Coastal Monitoring Station of Barcelona aims to gather physical, morphological and biological data with the highest resolution possible and with a long term perspective to determine the behavior and evolution of a coastal system where natural and human influences coexist. ELB includes a number of permanet devices continuosly measuring different parameters of the coastal zone and systematic (monthly) surveys assessing environmental factor. Five video cameras were deployed in October 2001 for monitoring the coast of Barcelona. Additionally, monthly hydrographical, suspended sediment concentration, biological (chlorophyll and other) surveys are carred out since April 2002. Finally, topographic (35) and batrymetric (6) surveys have been performed since October 2003.

The Barcelona coastal zone is an excellent "natural lab" highly stressed by the city where different research and technical experiments can be performed. These facilities and the data base can be used for research as well as for coastal management purposes. The main issues discussed so far are the characterization of the coastal morphodynamics (shoreline and bar systems), evaluation of the impact of beach nourishments and new breakwaters, phytoplankton dynamics associated and description of coastal algal blooms, and different topics of beach management (beach occupation or the dispersion of water masses).
 

Continuous measurements:

The Video Monitoring of the Barcelona beaches consists of 5 unattended video cameras (Argus System)  located at the top of a 142 m. building (Mapfre Building) near from the Olympic Harbour of Barcelona. It is designed to sample video images and return them to a central data collection system, and to do limited data processing on live video streams at the remote site. From that height (142m.), a panoramic view of the Olympic Harbour and three of the city beaches, Bogatell, Nova Icaria and La Barceloneta, is viewed. The beaches Mar Bella and Nova Mar Bella can also be observed, but with less spatial resolution.

 The system consists in two computers, the first is the "Argus Station" located af Mapfre tower which is an SGI O2 workstation; it stores the data only long enough for be transferred to the user. The second computer ("Argus network system" sotres the data and makes it available to the user, and, when required, sends the data back to a central Argus site for other users. The storage system is usually a PC running Linux, connected to the Internet via LAN. Every daylight-hour the cameras of the Argus Station get one picture per second for a ten-minute period.  Then The Argus system is comunicated with ICM through a DSL connection.

During 2010, a new Video Monitoring station has been installed in Castelldefels, 20 km south Barcelona.

The Meteo Station (Meteo) provides meterological information in real time. This device is situated on the roof of the ICM.
  

Satellite data. At first, in order to obtain satellite data, an HRPT (High Resolution Pixel Transmission) antenna was used from 2002 to 2008. Currently (since 2008), it is installed an EUMETCast receiving system. EUMETSAT’s Broadcast System for Environmental Data, is a multi-service dissemination system based on standard Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) technology.  It uses commercial telecommunication geostationary satellites to multicast files (data and products) to a wide user community.

in a web in approximately one hour. Sea Surface Temperature maps, NOAA QuickLooks, temperature from a Spanish network of environmental buoys (i.e. coastal buoys from Puertos del Estado), monthly videos from daily temperature maps, daily temperature maps and netCDF products are generated. Also, there are historical wind data (from 1999) and chlorophyll (1997) until 2006. All these data can be viewed with satellite data displays as SAIDIN and THREDDS.

AWAC current meter provides water speed, module and direction. AWAC is situated next to the exit of The Olympic Harbour of Barcelona. This device is being used to interconnect the coastal current effect in gaining/losing sand balance in the beaches.
Turbidimeters are instruments for measuring the suspended sediment concentration on marine waters.

 Regular Surveys:

 
Two transect off the Barcelona city every month since March 2002 (almost 100 surveys at present!). Sampling station are at 10, 20, 30 and 40 m water depth. Sampled variables are:

- Salinity, at surface in all the stations, analyzed with an AUTOSAL salinometer.
- Inorganic nutrients - at surface in all the stations, analyzed with an AA3 autoanalyzer (Grasshoff et al. 1999)
- Chlorophyll a (Chl a) - at surface in all the stations, measured by fluorometry in acetone extracts (Yentsch & Menzel 1963).
- CTD casts - in 8 station ( see figure), to obtain salinity, temperature, turbidity and fluorescence  information. Sigmatheta was calculated using the SeaBird software.
- Phytoplankton - at surface of stations 1 and 4, fixed with Lugol or formol-hexamine. Solutions and counted using the inverted   microscope technique (Utermöhl 1958).
- Suspended sediment concentration at both surface and bottom station is determined from seawater samples taken with Niskin bottles (coupled to the CTD). For each sample, between 1.5 and 6 litres of seawater were vacuum-filtered into a pre-weighed -Nuclepore filter (0.4 µm pore size) and the concentration of the suspended sediment was estimated gravimetrically.
- Bottom sediment samples for grain size analysis at each CTD cast since October 2003
- Topographic surveys of the emerged beach since June 2004 (about 35 surveys)
-  Bathymetric surveys of the coastal zone since October 2003 (6 surveys)

For further information about the geographical localitation of these devices, please check "study sites"  link.

Lead Researcher: Jorge Guillén