News of the institute for coastal research

The combined use of ENVISAT satellite and FerryBox data have first been tested successfully for the Southern North Sea. ENVISAT with the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer MERIS and the Advanced Across Track Spectral Radiometer AATSR provide an overview over the total North Sea for variables such as sea surface temperature, phytoplankton, total suspended matter or the penetration depth of light. The Ferry-Box, which is installed on the Ferry boat “Dutchess of Scandinavia” provides a number of important water quality variables along the transect Cuxhaven Harwich. The goal is to complement conventional monitoring procedures, where research vessels are operated for a few cruises per year and provide detailed but sparse data from water samples and profiling instruments. One example is monitoring of the seasonal phytoplankton development and the occurrence of exceptional blooms such as red tides, events which can easily be missed by a monitoring strategy with a sparse resolution in time and space.

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Using satellite- and ship-based radar systems together with methods developed at GKSS Research Center measurements of high-resolution wind fields are possible. Supplemental to anemometer point measurements spatial wind information are collected, which are of fundamental importance, e.g. in planning the best site for windmill park installations and their assessment.

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n 1996 Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch conducted a survey of climate scientists concerning their perspective on climate change. This survey was repeated in 2003 to assess any changes. In addition, in 2003 questions were asked pertaining to science-media interaction and the potential for adaptation to climate change.

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The GDCh (association of german chemists) awarded the price for analytical chemistry section to Mr. Christian Temme, scientist at the "Institute for Coastal Research" at GKSS. The awards show took place in the course of the ANAKON in Regensburg on March the 17th.

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The coast is subject to societal conflicts about the proper usage of this region. An extreme position is to consider the coast only as an opportunity for exploitation of resources, e.g. oil and wind energy. Another extreme concept to leave wide stretches alone so that ecosystems may develop without human interference. This wide range of different opinions and views emerges from a variety of culturally and socially constructed concepts and perceptions of the functioning, the role and the values of the coast. In the project “Images of the coast”, a list of different perceptions of the coast has been compiled for the special case of the German North Sea coast. These images are: useful landscape, natural region, man-made landscape, object of conflicting local and external interests, location endangered by natural hazards, manageable object, part of the global Earth system.

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