The project on developing a Near Real-Time Monitoring System for Marine Coastal Eutrophication Using Google Earth Engine (GEE) was kicked off on July 30, 2020. The meeting reviewed the project proposal, analyzed the main challenges, agreed on the activity timeline, and specified roles of project members.
Many coastal zones have been degraded by increasing anthropogenic nutrient loading. This Project intends to assess potential eutrophication areas on a global scale to support the decision-making process in coastal management.
The Kick-off meeting was attended by the representatives from the Nagoya University, the Northwest Pacific Region Environmental Cooperation Centre (NPEC), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, GOOGLE, Limited Liability Company (LLC), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Northwest Pacific Action Plan (UNEP-NOWPAP), and the Japan Association for the UNEP.
In order to fine-tune the approach and tools being developed, it was suggested starting the Project covering the NOWPAP sea area, so that there is no need to wait for the ingestion of the global data sets. It was recommended to share the outputs of this Project at related UN meetings, specifically while reporting the progress of achieving SDG 14.11. Working with numerical modellers was discussed as well.
Organisation of a follow-up technical meeting for data ingestion into GEE is planned for September 2020. The second meeting of the entire team will be held at the end of this year to review the progress of the Project.
The Project was awarded by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and Google Earth Engine on 17 July 2020 to address eutrophication challenges world-wide.
