MONICOAST (MONItoring of COASTal habitats) is about understanding and visualising the impacts of long-term environmental change on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in key habitats. Automatic data loggers are deployed in coastal habitats such as seagrass meadows, bladder wrack belts and mussel beds. These habitats are highly diverse and provide crucial habitats for a wide range of organisms. Nevertheless, information on the natural variability (on a daily, seasonal and interannual scale) as well as the impact of long-term changes in, for example, temperature, salinity, oxygen, pH and turbidity for the functioning of these habitats is lacking.
MONICOAST will also convey the importance of these habitats to the general public through underwater photos, videos and 360 Virtual Reality videos that we will start filming this year.
This project runs on external funding and was initiated as a collaboration between DROPP and TZS, and it is also supported by The Bank of Åland - Baltic Sea Project and the Weisell Foundation.
If you are interested in sponsoring a new data logger (or part of a logger), you can use the University of Helsinki donation page and there search for "Monicoast".
Follow how the temperature, salinity, oxygen concentration, pH and turbidity changes on a daily basis in our coastal waters.
Why do we need to measure temperature, salinity, oxygen concentration, pH and turbidity? What does it tell us about the state of our coastal waters and about the functioning of the ecosystem?