Environmental, hydro-meteorological and veterinarian monitoring program

The issue of organic and inorganic pollution of the lagoon, of influence of adverse climatic conditions and aquatic animal disease outbreaks proved to be one of the main issue of concern as the impact of these factors on economic activities is relevant. There has been a considerable effort to collect all available secondary information and primary data are still being collected. However, a routinely operating monitoring scheme is not in place yes and will be the one of the major objectives of the project phase II.

In order to contribute to the goals of IMOLA and achieve a sustainable use and management of the lagoon systems' resources, to improve environmental conditions and in turn to ameliorate the quality of the food product issued from the lagoon, a monitoring routine is being established.

A pilot routing monitoring scheme has been developed by IMOLA, in support the existing analytical techniques that DOFI is implementing on its own resources. However, even this pilot complementary program is not considered satisfactory because a more massive database on critical environmental parameters has to be built. For this reason, we are emplacing in the short term, two interventions that together may provide a protocol for future standardized hydro-chemical data collection programs, together with an embryonic system of remotely operated hydro-chemical sensors that might instrumentally and automatically cope with the limitation of traditional surveys.

Manual monitoring analytical routine

As far as the traditional monitoring programs and related laboratory analyses, the methodology includes: i) environmental monitoring test, ii) hydrologic modeling for pollutant dispersal, iii) transport, distribution and accumulation of tracers and chemicals, iv) specific shrimp-farming impacts, v) disease-outbreak monitoring and control, vi) meteorological parameters detection and recording. This specific activity will emplace a prototype of historical record of major critical parameters, nested into the IMOLA GIS database, harmonized with the National program of coastal environment monitoring and control under construction.

Automated, remotely operated hydro-meteorological station

The setup of one experimental station, as an embryonic system of networked sensor systems installed at specific locations in the lagoon is among the primary interests of the IMOLA second phase, to emplace a complementary technological tool able assist the manual monitoring routines. This system would be linked to an operative base planned to be installed under DARD.