MONITORING AND MODELING OF THE MARINE COASTAL ENVIRONMENT

The need for better monitoring and modeling of the marine environment has increased dramatically in recent years in particular, along coasta l boundaries and shelf regions where human activities are extensive an d pollution has a significant impact. This has been documented in a nu mber of unpredicted events along the coast of Norway, such os storm su rges, harmful algal blooms, and oil spills. Systematic integration of remote sensing observations, field observations, and numerical model r esults is critical for such improvement. We will demonstrate this by p resenting examples of (1) model validation by spaceborne infrared (IR) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing observations; and ( 2) water quality monitoring and simulation using airborne spectrometry and models. High resolution, coupled physical-chemical-biological mod els, as well as implementation of data assimilation schemes, are neede d before a dedicated system for monitoring and forecasting of the coas tal environment can become fully operational.