D4.2 Report compiling test and validation site characteristics. Deliverable report of project H2020 MONOCLE (grant 776480)

Several validation sites were selected for MONOCLE to ensure they represent a broad range of biogeochemical properties and deployment conditions in which to validate innovative in situ sensors, platforms and methods. The validation sites include the inland waters Loch Leven (Scotland), Lake Balaton (Hungary), Lake Dunkern (Sweden) and Lake Tanganyika (Tanzania), as well as the Razelm-Sinoe coastal lagoon system (Romania). The MONOCLE project also has access to test sites, which are sites frequently used by MONOCLE partners for specific instrument development.  Whilst no collective campaigns are planned around test sites, access to these sites provides an additional opportunity for testing by the MONOCLE consortium and can be organised locally.

All validation sites are subject to anthropogenic impacts, and many are of great economic value to the local areas. These water bodies also represent areas of the weakest performance in present Earth Observation (EO) capabilities for retrieval of water quality parameters. Some sites have been well characterised in terms of bio-geo-optical properties, in previous projects (e.g. Loch Leven and Lake Balaton), while others are in relatively data-poor regions with regard to optical properties (e.g. Lake Dunkern, Lake Tanganyika and the Razelm-Sinoe Lagoon).  The validation sites cover a range of climates and geographic locations, as well as a range of trophic status (oligotrophic to eutrophic) and optical water types, as shown through processed EO data.

There are varying deployment opportunities at each site (e.g. boats, buoys, ferries, citizen science opportunities) to allow for sufficient validation approaches and capabilities for the MONOCLE systems.  Also highlighted in this deliverable are the laboratory facilities available (or not) and the typical sampling locations for historic data at each site, which will aid implementation of each field campaign.

Ultimately, these five validation sites sufficiently cover a range of bio-geo-optical properties to provide robust validation campaigns for the MONOCLE sensors and systems. The site characteristics presented here will be supplemented with high-end bio-optical characterisation of each field site during the MONOCLE campaigns, including any seasonal and spatial variations.