News

The European Space Agency (ESA) hereby invites all interested companies from DUE participating countries to submit a tender for the DUE GlobWetland II and CoastColour procurements. If companies are not yet registered as an ESA bidder, they are invited to obtain access to EMITS by completing a questionnaire, which can be found at the indicated URL below, section Registration Request.

The Tiltle of the Globwetland II ITT is "DUE GLOBWETLAND II, A REGIONAL PILOT PROJET OF THE RAMSAR CONVENTION ON WETLANDS" and is referenced AO-6090 in the ESA Electronic Mailing Invitation to Tender System (EMITS.

The main goal of the GlobWetland II project is to contribute to the set up of a Global Wetlands Observing System (G-WOS) in accordance with the strategic plan 2009-2015 of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. The GlobWetland II project will be built on the findings and achievements of its precursor, the GlobWetland I project, which has been running from 2003 until 2008 and has demonstrated how satellite Earth Observation technology can be a cost- effective and productive tool for the Ramsar Convention and for the conservation and management of wetlands in overall. The GlobWetland II project will aim principally at designing, developing, validating and transferring a G-WOS pilot information system for the production of a number of wetland related geo-information maps and indicators, over wetland sites and surrounding areas, for different points in time. The geographical areas that will be covered by the project are the coastal catchment areas of the Southern and Eastern part of the Mediterranean basin, extending from Morocco to Turkey. The GlobWetland II will develop this G-WOS pilot project in a regional context through a close partnership with the MedWet Secretariat and its Observatory of Mediterranean Wetlands, and with the Ramsar National Focal Points and supporting conservation agencies of the subject countries.

Closing date has been fixed on the 28 September 2009.

The Title of the CoastColour ITT is "DUE COASTCOLOUR" and is referenced AO-6141 in the ESA Electronic Mailing Invitation to Tender System (EMITS.

Recent research in satellite monitoring of ocean colour in coastal zones has demonstrated continuing advances in the retrieval of important parameters such as the chlorophyll concentration, algal blooms, sediment load, water clarity and river runoff. The societal benefits of this type of information are potentially huge, examples include: coastal ecosystem research, early warning for aquaculture, water quality information for recreational users, and pollution monitoring. ESA's MERIS instrument is particularly well suited to monitoring coastal waters thanks to its unique combination of spectral bands, excellent calibration and relatively high resolution (300m). The overall objective of the DUE CoastColour project is therefore to increase user uptake of MERIS by demonstrating its value for monitoring coastal waters. In particular, the project aims (1) to develop, validate and demonstrate best-practice regional optimisations of MERIS Case 2 retrieval algorithms over a globally distributed set of user defined areas of interest; (2) to investigate the relative merits of MERIS Case 2 ocean- colour algorithms compared to other sources of coastal ocean-colour information, both EO and in-situ; and (3), to encourage and assist the scientific community to fully exploit the potential of MERIS data for monitoring coastal waters. Achieving these objectives requires a number of related activities, including Case 2 algorithm prototyping and regional optimisation, ocean-colour product validation and intercomparison, production of Case 2 products from the full archive of available MERIS-FRS Level-1 data, and the set up and maintenance of a web portal for providing the ocean-colour products to the user community as well as a forum facilitating the development of community best practices.

Closing date has been fixed on the 14 September 2009.