Gema Casal

National University of Ireland, Maynooth | NUI Maynooth · National Centre for Geocomputation

This Science Comic was created by members of the EU 2020-research project 'Marine Coastal Ecosystems - Biodiversity and Services in a Changing World' as part of the project outputs. This eBook is open access and can be read or downloaded via https://macobios.eu/prp/other-products/#ComicBook . See file for an excerpt. Versions in other languages wil...

Biodiversity loss and climate change have severely impacted ecosystems and livelihoods worldwide, compromising access to food and water, increasing disaster risk, and affecting human health globally. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have gained interest in addressing these global societal challenges. Although much effort has been directed to NbS in urb...

To understand the density patterns of the tube-forming polychaete Diopatra neapolitana and their relationship with environmental factors, an extensive sampling was conducted in an intertidal, commercially exploited population in the Ría de Vigo (NW Spain). Interpolation of the sampled densities was carried out by Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW). T...

There is growing concern over climate models that project significant changes in the oceans, with consequences on marine biodiversity and human well-being. However, marine and coastal ecosystems respond differently to climate change-related stressors depending on the ecosystem, species composition and interactions, geo-morphologic settings, and spa...

Biodiversity is a key indicator of ecosystem health and plays an important role in providing ecosystem services that are essential for economic development and social well-being. In Ireland, climate change and anthropogenic pressures have led to biodiversity loss and habitat degradation, which in turn affects the provision of ecosystem services. Th...

The long-term provision of ocean ecosystem services de- pends on healthy ecosystems and effective sustainable man- agement. Understanding public opinion about marine and coastal ecosystems is important to guide decision-making and inform specific actions. However, available data on pub- lic perceptions on the interlinked effects of climate change,...

As an island nation, Ireland needs to ensure effective management measures to protect marine ecosystems and their services, such as the provision of fishery resources. The characterization of marine waters using satellite data can contribute to a better understanding of variations in the upper ocean and, consequently, the effect of their changes on...

Coastal lagoons have been providing ecological, economic and cultural benefits for many centuries. Despite their importance, the monitoring of coastal lagoons poses numerous challenges related to their complex environmental processes, their large variability in size and their remote location, inhibiting effective management programmes. This study d...

This study presents an assessment of a model inversion approach to derive shallow water bathymetry in optically complex waters, with the aim of both understanding localised capability and contributing to the global evaluation of Sentinel-2 for coastal monitoring. A dataset of 12 Sentinel-2 MSI images in three different study areas along the Irish c...

Optical satellite data is an efficient and complementary method to hydrographic surveys for deriving bathymetry in shallow coastal waters. Empirical approaches (in particular, the models of Stumpf and Lyzenga) provide a practical methodology to derive bathymetric information from remote sensing. Recent studies, however, have focused on enhancing th...

Satellite derived bathymetry (SDB) enables rapid mapping of large coastal areas through measurement of optical penetration of the water column. The resolution of bathymetric mapping and achievable horizontal and vertical accuracies vary but generally, all SDB outputs are constrained by sensor type, water quality and other environmental conditions....

Bathymetry estimated from optical satellite imagery has been increasingly implemented as an alternative to traditional bathymetric survey techniques. The availability of new sensors such as Sentinel-2 with improved spatial and temporal resolution, in comparison with previous optical sensors, offers innovative capabilities for bathymetry derivation....

Using a combination of geostatistical methods and generalized additive models (GAMs), we have analyzed the combined effect of spatial, environmental and biological factors on the density of Patella vulgata, Patella depressa and Patella ulyssiponensis, three limpet species coexisting in rocky intertidal areas of the Galician coast (NW Iberian Penins...

Temporal and spatial variability of Sea Surface Temperature (SST), a key variable linked to climate change, was analysed using a continuous 34-year time series of Advanced Very-High-Resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data (1982–2015). The climatological analysis showed a significant latitudinal SST gradient; waters were warmer in the south and colder in...

Understanding the occurrence and movement of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) is a key environmental, economic and societal factor in coastal areas. The global nature and impacts of HABs requires the establishment of international programmes and a cooperative approach. Moreover, given that HAB events do not respect national boundaries, cross region netw...

The high dynamic and optical complexity of coastal marine areas represent a major challenge in designing a program to adequately monitor and analyse these environments. Field programs consisting of periodic in situ measurements, using traditional field instruments and sampling protocols from boats, are most often ineffective in capturing the range...

The diffuse attenuation coefficient (Kd) is an optical property that is used to determine turbidity, water body type classification, photosynthetic and biological processes and heat transfer in the upper ocean. Water transparency is one of the indicators used to determine the status of a water body in eutrophication assessments. It is used in monit...

Landsat 8 is the first Earth observation satellite with sufficient radiometric and spatial resolution to allow global mapping of lake CDOM and DOC (coloured dissolved organic matter and dissolved organic carbon, respectively) content. Landsat 8 is a multispectral sensor however, the number of potentially usable band ratios, or more sophisticated in...

Many lakes in boreal and arctic regions have high concentrations of CDOM (coloured dissolved organic matter). Remote sensing of such lakes is complicated due to very low water leaving signals. There are extreme (black) lakes where the water reflectance values are negligible in almost entire visible part of spectrum (400-700 nm) due to the absorptio...

A database of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from 1982 to 2015 and Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) from 1998 to 2013 have been generated for Irish coast. Monthly averages of both variables have been analysed to study their spatial and temporal trends in each ICES Division surrounding the country. SST presented a clear latitudinal gradient with warmer waters i...

The Marine Institute, Ireland, runs a suite of operational regional and coastal ocean models. Recent developments include several tailored products that focus on the key needs of the Irish aquaculture sector. In this article, an overview of the products and services derived from the models are presented. A shellfish model that includes growth and p...

The use of remote sensing has increased greatly in recent years due to technological advances and its advantages in comparison with traditional methods. In the case of Ireland however the use of these techniques is not well established and only 17% of remote sensing studies are related to marine and coastal environments. As a first step, and taking...

The use of remote sensing is well established to map coastal environments due to its advantages with regard to traditional field methods. Among these advantages, it can be mentioned that these techniques are non-invasive, allow studying large areas, mapping inaccessible zones as well as provide a repetitive cover of a target area. However, despite...

Rı´a de Vigo and Rı´a de Alda ´n have high biological richness that is reflected in the number of environmental protection areas like the Atlantic Islands National Park and five places of community interest. Benthic algal communities play an important role in these ecosystems due to their ecological functions and support a great part of this biolog...

The term remote sensing is related to the action of obtaining information about an object, area or phenomenon without a direct contact. Over time this term has become increasingly important due to technological advances until becoming a technique of obtaining information, key in many and different fields. However, especially in Spain, the informati...

Introducción El término teledetección o percepción re-mota tiene su origen en el término inglés «re-mote sensing», utilizado por primera vez en 1950 (Walter, 2006). La teledetección, podría definirse como la ciencia o el arte de adqui-rir información sobre un objeto, área o fenó-meno a través de los datos adquiridos me-diante un dispositivo que no...

The ecological importance of benthic macroalgal communities in coastal ecosystems has been recognised worldwide and the application of remote sensing to study these communities presents certain advantages respect to in situ methods. The present study used three CHRIS-PROBA images to analyse macroalgal communities distribution in the Seno de Corcubi...

Remote sensing has become an increasingly used technique for the thematic mapping of large marine areas. In recent years, many researchers have successfully applied these techniques in different places for benthic mapping in clear waters; however, areas with turbid waters present important limitations that are gradually being solved by recent techn...

The invasive algae Sargassum muticum in the Iberian Peninsula competes with other native algae with important ecological value. The development of new methodologies are necessary in order to evaluate and monitor efficiently the spread of the S. muticum. The aim of this project is to validate the use of hyperespectral images to map S. muticum forest...

The shoreline, defined as the contact limit between emerged and oceanic surface, is a key geographic limit for any study developed in the littoral zone. Although there is a certain degree of consensus in its definition, it gives rise to a multitude of specific criteria for its delimitation depending on the indicator, the source of information used...

The shoreline, defined as the contact limit between emerged and oceanic surface, is a key geographic limit for any study developed in the littoral zone. Although there is a certain degree of consensus in its definition, it gives rise to a multitude of specific criteria for its delimitation depending on the indicator, the source of information used...

The shoreline, defined as the contact limit between emerged and oceanic surface, is a key geographic limit for any study developed in the littoral zone. Although there is a certain degree of consensus in its definition, it gives rise to a multitude of specific criteria for its delimitation depending on the indicator, the source of information used...