A preliminary analysis of in situ and remotely sensed environmental variables in the coastal region of the Portofino Marine Protected Area

Abstract

Coastal marine environment is a complex system and its management requires adequate information. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are considered pilot sites useful to define innovative tools for the Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM). Their management however requires acquaintance with the relationships between the protected site and the status of the coastal neighbouring areas in order to assess mutual effects and influences. There is the need of monitoring systems capable of highlighting physical and biological phenomena, and possible oceanographic anomalies at local scale, to assess possible existing differences between MPAs and their neighbouring unprotected zones. The present study proposes an integrated analysis of data sets coming from in situ and remote-sensing data to evaluate the reliability of satellite sensors for coastal zone monitoring and to better understand the short-term environmental dynamics on a coastal area centred on the Portofino MPA (Ligurian Sea).