Julien Mader

• Master of Engineering
• Head of Marine Technologies Area at AZTI

The potential of predictive maintenance for critical port infrastructure, reducing risks and extending its life cycle, remains to be unlocked by suitable quantitative information that fosters predictive maintenance and sustained investments towards progressive climate-proofing of the infrastructure. The PI-BREAK (Predictive Intelligent system for B...

Coastal upwelling has been extensively studied since it plays a critical role in the connectivity between offshore waters and coastal ecosystems, which has impacts on water quality, fisheries, and aquaculture production. Significant efforts have been devoted to the quantification of the intensity, duration, and variability of this phenomenon by mea...

Adaptation in and around estuaries, to ensure the future resilience of both the natural environment and the communities that are located alongside is an increasingly pressing need. As part of an adaptation planning program for the Basque estuaries (northern Spain, south-eastern Bay of Biscay), a modelling system to simulate the morphological respon...

Coastal upwelling has been extensively studied since it plays a critical role in the connectivity between offshore waters and coastal ecosystems, impacting on water quality, fisheries and aquaculture production. Significant efforts have been devoted to the quantification of the intensity, duration and variability of this phenomenon by means of coas...

El cambio climático y el ascenso del nivel del mar (ANM) son una amenaza creciente e inevitable para los estuarios del planeta, por lo que aumentar su resiliencia es un requisito ineludible. En este contexto, se ha iniciado un programa de investigación para determinar las medidas de adaptación a tomar en los estuarios del País Vasco, incluyendo el...

The use of high-frequency radar (HFR) data is increasing worldwide for different applications in the field of operational oceanography and data assimilation, as it provides real-time coastal surface currents at high temporal and spatial resolution. In this work, a Lagrangian-based, empirical, real-time, short-term prediction (L-STP) system is prese...

A wave resource characterisation is presented for the French Basque coastal region, with a specific focus on Bayonne nearshore area. The study is derived from a 10-year hindcast computation performed with a very high-resolution coastal implementation of a SWAN model. After a detailed validation of the model in intermediate and shallow water, the sp...

This contribution describes the KOSTASystem technology. This line of work started in 2007 and is currently implemented in 20 operational stations distributed along the 100 km of the Basque Coast (Spain). The monitored areas include urban beaches, port protection structures as well as natural coastal stretches. The aim of this technology is to gener...

Search and rescue (SAR) modeling applications, mostly based on Lagrangian tracking particle algorithms, rely on the accuracy of met-ocean forecast models. Skill assessment methods are therefore required to evaluate the performance of ocean models in predicting particle trajectories. The Skill Score (SS), based on the Normalized Cumulative Lagrangia...

This document is a step-by-step guide to start transferring HF radar (HFR) data from your network to the EU HFR node. The EU HFR node acts as the focal point for the European HFR data providers, implementing the HF radar data flow from the data providers to the distribution platforms ( Copernicus Marine Service , EMODnet-Phys and SeaDataNet ). Th...

Large scale convergence regions of floating marine litter are commonly observed in semi-enclosed seas as the Bay of Biscay. However, clean-up activities on such accumulation regions are limited by the spread of the large-size floating litter on the sea surface. Data gathered by a small-scale fishing vessel devoted to active fishing for floating lit...

Rivers act as pathways to the ocean of significant but unquantified amounts of plastic pollution. Measuring with precision the quantities of riverine plastic inputs is crucial to support and ensure the effectiveness of prevention and mitigation waste management actions. However, there is a lack of technological tools capable of monitoring and, cons...

High Frequency Radar (HFR) technology refers to land based remote sensing instruments capable of measuring surface currents and ocean waves at ranges up to 200 km or more. HFR technology is widely acknowledged as a cost-efficient tool to monitor coastal regions and has potential use to monitor coastal regions all over the world. Globally, the numbe...

Wave resource assessment is the first step toward the installation of a wave energy converter (WEC). To support initiatives for wave energy development in the southwest of France, a coastal wave database is built from a 44-year hindcast simulation with the spectral wave model SWAN (Simulating WAve Nearshore) run on a high-resolution unstructured gr...

The use of High Frequency Radar (HFR) data is increasing worldwide for operational oceanography and data assimilation, as it provides real-time coastal surface currents at high temporal and spatial resolution. In this work, a Lagrangian based empirical real-time, Short-Term Prediction (L-STP) system is presented in order to provide short term forec...

In the context of the User-Uptake event, here we presents the Publish-public-partnership of the project and the collaborators, the need addressed by the IBISAR service and its objectives as well as the targeted users. The three main elements of the services are described. We also show how IBISAR service use and transform the Copernicus Marine Servi...

Academic, government, and private organizations from around the globe have established High Frequency radar (hereinafter, HFR) networks at regional or national levels. Partnerships have been established to coordinate and collaborate on a single global HFR network (http://global-hfradar.org/). These partnerships were established in 2012 as part of t...

Marine litter is identified as the major ocean pollution today, with a significant impact on the environment. The transport of litter by ocean circulation is still poorly understood, and the management of marine litter remains a major challenge for local authorities. This work investigates the transport of floating marine litter (FML) in the coasta...

The accurate monitoring of surface transport, which depends on the details of the surface velocity field at several scales, is key for the effective integrated management of coastal areas, where many human activities concentrate. This has been the driver for the growth in the number of operational land-based High Frequency Radar (HFR) systems along...

Marine litter is a global concern affecting all the oceans of the world. It threatens not only marine environment and human wellbeing, but also it hampers economic activities such as coastal tourism, fisheries and shipping. Floating items represent the mobile fraction of marine litter that is located at the surface of the water column. Recent studi...

Marine litter is a global concern affecting all the oceans of the world. It threatens not only marine environment and human wellbeing, but also it hampers economic activities such as coastal tourism, fisheries and shipping. Floating items represent the mobile fraction of marine litter that is located at the surface of the water column. Recent studi...

Rivers are according to literature key vectors of marine litter input into the oceans. And the ongrowing concern towards plastic pollution is making authorities to seek for new technology and approaches. We developed a riverine floating litter detection and monitoring system to quantify the litter passing through a river mouth. The system, that is...

IBISAR downstream data service presentation, its three main elements, the skill assessment methodology, the first results obtained in the Ibiza Channel

Improving the knowledge of the seas surrounding the Iberian Peninsula, Balearic and Canary islands is one of the objectives for the Spanish oceanography. For that purpose, a number of fixed and drifting floats have been established in the last 25 years. They measure sea surface temperature and salinity, ocean current velocity, air temperature, humi...

Brief overview of IBISAR downstream data service, key numbers, its main elements and description of the skill assessment methodology. Benefits for targeted users and the impact on CMEMS

Marine litter is an emerging issue of global concern causing harm to marine wildlife, coastal communities and marine activities. Floating marine litter constitutes the fraction of litter located at the water surface. In the Bay of Biscay, floating marine litter density is considerable in comparison to other European regions. Furthermore, this area...

The use of HF Radar data is increasing worldwide for operational oceanography, as it provides real-time coastal surface currents at high temporal and spatial resolution. For operational purposes, gap-filled fields are needed for Lagrangian applications as well as to forecast the trajectories for real applications, such as search and rescue and oil...

Different remote sensing data were combined to characterise a winter anticyclonic eddy in the southeastern Bay of Biscay and to infer its effects on cross-shelf exchanges, in a period when typical along shelf-slope currents depict a cyclonic pattern. While the joint analysis of available satellite data (infrared, visible and altimetry) permitted th...

El País Vasco cuenta con un Plan Estratégico para el desarrollo de la acuicultura, incluido en el Plan Plurianual de la Acuicultura, que rota sobre 4 ejes principales (de la figura): simplificación administrativa, desarrollo ambiental sostenible, mercado e imagen y competitividad y desarrollo económico local. A su vez, el desarrollo de la acuicultu...

An important question in bivalve aquaculture is how many individuals of a certain species can be grown on a lease before growth is limited or before mortality becomes unacceptable. Regardless, the information about stocking density is scarce in the scientific literature and results are not always comparable. Thus, stocking density for oyster cultur...

Bivalve mollusc aquaculture has been considered as an economic diversification activity for fisheries in the strategic plans of the Basque Government. In the last years several initiatives of mollusc aquaculture have been set up in the Basque Coast. In the present study, results of the hydrodynamic and water quality characterization of the producti...

High Frequency Radar (HFR) is a land-based remote sensing instrument offering a unique insight to coastal ocean variability, by providing synoptic, high frequency and high resolution data at the ocean atmosphere interface. HFRs have become invaluable tools in the field of operational oceanography for measuring surface currents, waves and winds, wit...

Inventory of HF radar networks in Europe, with focus on infrastructure management, data processing and data dissemination.

Since January 2009, two long-range high-frequency (HF) radar systems have been collecting hourly high-spatial-resolution surface current data in the southeastern corner of the Bay of Biscay. The temporal resolution of the HF radar surface currents permits simulating drifter trajectories with the same time step as that of real drifters deployed in t...

The analysis of deep-water glider hydrographic and fluorescence data, together with satellite measurements provides a new insight into eddy-induced anomalies within the South-Eastern Bay of Biscay, during summer. Two cyclonic eddies and a SWODDY have been observed in different glider transects and by means of different sources of satellite data. Ve...

Oscillating Water Column (OWC)-based power take-off systems are one of the potential solutions to the current energy problems arising from the use of nuclear fission and the consumption of fossil fuels. This kind of energy converter turns wave energy into electric power by means of three different stages: firstly wave energy is transformed into pne...

The European Union is promoting the use of renewable energies as a path to fight global warming. Among them are diverse ocean energies and in particular, Oscillating Water Column (OWC)-based wave energy stands as one of the most promising technologies. An OWC device is basically composed by a capture chamber with a turbo-generator module attached t...

In the current scenario, the consumption of fossil fuels and the energy obtained by means of nuclear fission are questioned due to all the problems they concern. One of the best answers to that issue is the use of renewable energies and, amongst them, Oscillating Water Column (OWC)-based energy converters. These devices transform the mechanical ene...

The Biscay Marine Energy Platform (bimep) is an offshore infrastructure for the demonstration and testing of wave energy harnessing devices promoted by the Basque Entity of Energy (Ente Vasco de la Energía - EVE). Bimep is located close to Arminza town (Basque Country, Northern Spain) and it consists on an 5.3 km2 sea area between 50 and 90 m depth...

The coast of the Euskadi-Aquitaine Euroregion is characterized by a medium-high level of wave exposure, so this source of energy is considered of high interest. The newly published action plan of the Atlantic Maritime Strategy promotes initiatives that will accelerate the development of marine energies (priority 2). A clear ambitious position of th...

This paper describes the operational protocol established in the southeastern Bay of Biscay (study area) for the sighting and tracking of Portuguese man-of-war. This action protocol combines sightings of Portuguese man-of-war at sea with hourly surface currents and winds obtained with the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) and the Weather Resear...

Two HF Radar CODAR SeaSonde stations are working operationally in the south-eastern Bay of Biscay since 2009 (Fig. 1). The HF radar stations are emitting at a central frequency of 4.86 MHz and provide hourly surface currents with 5 km radial and 5° angular resolutions and a 150 km mean radial coverage. The examination of 3 year HF radar data reveal...

The inclusion of water renewal behaviour in the risk assessment of water pollution for Bilbao harbour (located within the Nervión estuary, southeastern Bay of Biscay) is analysed. Several parameterisations of water renewal (integral and local perspectives), obtained from the numerical evolution analysis of a Eulerian tracer, were used. The local ch...

The Basque coastal area, in the southeastern Bay of Biscay, can be characterised as being strongly influenced by land climate. This, together with the presence of irregular and steep topography, complicates considerably the coastal water circulation patterns. Time-series of hourly currents, surface atmospheric pressure and wind data were analysed f...

Since 2007, high temporal resolution time-series of currents, temperature and salinity, from two oceanic moorings, have provided information on the local water column dynamics and hydrography, over the slope of the southeastern part of the Bay of Biscay. In this study, these data are analysed to describe the variability observed in currents and str...

The AZTI’s Marine Biotic Index (AMBI) was developed in 2000. Some years later a software was created for the calculation and made available in the page http://ambi.azti.es. Several versions of this freely available software have been created. In this paper we explain the new AMBI 5.0 version, for Windows 7, which has some novelties regarding the im...

HF radar surface current data together with data from two operational offshore oceanographic buoys located over the slope are used to map the variability associated with the near-inertial waves, during a target year (2009), in the SE Bay of Biscay. The results obtained show the complex 4D distribution of inertial oscillations in this area. We find...

Fish egg and larval assemblages, and the factors that drive them in the nearshore environment remain largely unknown. In this study, two sampling methods were used to assess the relative influences of space, time and environment on ichthyoplankton communities at nearshore stations, near the Cerbère-Banyuls Marine Protected Area (France), during spr...

The accuracy of temperature measurements from drifters is first examined for 16 drifters (manufactured either by Metocean Data Systems or by Pacific Gyre) deployed with two temperature sensors in the tropical or North Atlantic Ocean. One of these sensors is the SST thermistor commonly used on Surface Velocity Program (SVP) drifters since the late 1...

The results of the trend analysis of air and sea surface temperatures measured in Donostia-San Sebastián, southeastern Bay of Biscay, are described within this contribution. The air temperature data series belongs to the Meteorological Observatory of Igeldo (AEMET) (43° 18' N, 02° 02' W; at 252 m above the mean sea level). The time series extends f...

In this contribution, the most relevant aspects of the ITSASEUS project are shown. Under this acronym, several works are carried out by the partners (EUVE and AZTI-Tecnalia) in order to implement an operational oceano-meteorological system for providing daily a 72-hour forecast for the Basque Country region and its influence areas. The system combi...

An ichthyoplankton survey was conducted at the periphery of Cabrera National Park (Balearic Islands, Western Mediterranean Sea) in July 2004, using bongo nets, fixed nets and collection of oceanographic data. This work focused on analysing the distribution of eggs and larval stages of some fishery-targeted taxa (Coris julis, Epinephelus spp., Sciae...

Hourly and 12 km horizontal resolution wind fields simulated by the WRF model (Weather Research and Forecasting model) have been used to force the WAM model (WAve prediction Model), for a wave hindcast run in the southeastern Bay of Biscay. Three-hourly boundary conditions (defined by directional wave spectra) were provided by the WAVEWATCH III mod...

This contribution is focused on the validation of the modelling forecasts provided by the operational ocean-meteorological system established for the Basque Country region (Southeastern Bay of Biscay). The system, implemented and developed within the Framework of ETORTEK Programme (Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism of the Basque Government)...

In this contribution, a pre-operational local oceanic system, which combines data acquisition with numerical modelling in the two main harbours of the Basque Country, Bilbao and Pasaia, is described. The analysis of wind and current measurements showed the adequacy of the data acquisition system to provide open boundary conditions to solve the hydr...

A background knowledge of marine dynamics helps harbour managers to control pollution and to manage dredging and traffic operations. This contribution studies the hydrodynamic conditions within Bilbao Harbour, which is enclosed by the Nervión Estuary (in the Basque Country, Spain). The results obtained from hydrographical surveys are compared with...

Low-salinity waters, within the upper layers of the water column, have been observed in the oceanic region of the southeastern limit of the Bay of Biscay (in March, 2007). This contribution assesses the potential role of large surface freshwater discharges from the Adour (France), Nervión, Oria, Deba, Urola, Urumea and Bidasoa (Basque Country) rive...

En este trabajo se presentan los aspectos más relevantes del proyecto ITSASEUS. Bajo este acrónimo se enmarcan las diferentes acciones que se están llevando a cabo, por parte de los partícipes del proyecto (AZTI-Tecnalia y la Fundación EUVE) para la implementación de un sistema operacional océano-meteorológico que operará en el entorno marítimo del...

In this contribution, the most relevant aspects of the ITSASEUS project are shown. Under this acronym, several works are carried out by the partners (EUVE and AZTI-Tecnalia) in order to implement an operational ocean-meteorological system for the Basque Country region and its influence areas. The system combines meteorological, wave and hydrodynami...

The Basque coastal area, in the southeastern Bay of Biscay, can be characterised as being more influenced by land climate and inputs, than other typically ‘open sea’ areas. The influence of coastal processes, together with the presence of irregular and steep topography, complicate greatly the water circulation patterns. Water movement along the Bas...

This contribution sets out proposals towards 2012 for the oceanographic and meteorological strategy to be undertaken in the Basque Country region. This strategy, included within the Framework of ETORTEK Programme, funded by the Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism of the Basque Government, brings together climatological, oceanographic and mete...

Recent efforts have allowed laying the foundations of an operational coastal oceanography system in the Basque Country region (southeastern Bay of Biscay). This strategy brings together climatological, oceanographic and meteorological institutions, in order to improve the way in which these services are working presently and merge the products to a...

This contribution sets out proposals towards 2010 for the oceanographic and meteorological modelling strategy to be undertaken in the Basque Country. This strategy, included within the Framework of ETORTEK Programme, and funded by the Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism of the Basque Government, brings together climatological, meteorological...

European anchovy larvae were sampled in June 2004 in the south-eastern part of the Bay of Biscay (limits: 4°W, 46°N). Larval distribution was analysed and compared with spawning distribution in previous weeks. Patches of old larvae were found around the French and Cantabrian shelf (CS) edges and even in oceanic waters, far from the main spawning ar...

The Operational Oceanography Coastal Systems established within the Basque Country region, southeastern corner of the Bay of Biscay, are presented here. Observational data are compared with numerical modelling results derived from the Spanish Operational Oceanography System established within the ESEOO project. The aim of these systems is to provid...

During 2000 and 2001 and at the beginning of 2002, current meters were deployed at 25,50 and 110 m water depths along two transects: one offshore of San Sebastian and the other offshore of Hondarribia. At the same time, hydrographical cruises and the collection of sediment samples were undertaken over the coastal section. The aim of the study was t...

The present paper deals with some of the results obtained by AZTI from the application of finite element codes for the numerical study of plumes produced by waste spills from aquaculture stations. The use of numerical models to simulate physical reality represents a new approach to studying the impact of fish farming, facilitating the analysis of s...

Numerical modelling of the dispersion of waste products from aquaculture installations: A tool for ap- propriate environmental management of the sector The present paper deals with some of the results obtained by AZTI from the application of finite element codes for the numerical study of plumes produced by waste spills from aquaculture stations. T...