Following OPAL Project, which aimed to understand the major pathways delivering nutrients, trace metals, and pollutants originating from anthropogenic activities to the Mar Menor coastal lagoon, the WINDERS project strives to elucidate the role of sediment resuspension as a source delivering these same solutes to the lagoon and its role as a driver of the eutrophication events occurring in the lagoon waters in 2016, 2019 and 2021. This project will focus on identifying the origin of solutes (agriculture, urbanism, tourism, and mining wastes) present in sediments. quantifying the transfer [...]

The Labrador Sea (Northwest Atlantic) supports enormous spring blooms of phytoplankton and important fisheries, playing a critical role in the biological carbon pump (BCP) and climate regulation. However, this area is experiencing significant changes due to climate warming, such as an increase in sea surface temperature and vertical stratification, and a decline in nutrient concentrations. These changes are expected to shift the plankton community structure and, in turn, productivity and carbon export. Yet, we lack the measurements needed to accurately quantify and predict how climate change will alter the [...]

The BLUEISLANDS project aims to properly identify, address and mitigate the effects of the seasonal variation of waste generation on Mediterranean islands resulting from tourism. The ultimate goal of the project is to establish the necessary conditions so that the waste generated on each island will serve as a resource bank which will be used to fuel local loops of circular economy. Plastic pollution is threatening the oceans, marine animals and even human health. When it is discarded on land, plastic often ends up in the marine system where it disintegrates [...]

Unprecedentedly fast, human-derived fossil-fuel burning has elevated atmospheric CO2 with largely unknown impacts to surface ocean organisms. While warming and acidification have produced some observable changes globally and regionally in a physical and chemical sense, associated changes to planktonic calcifying organisms at the base of marine food webs and ecosystems remains very poorly understood. In particular, coccolithophores (phytoplankton), foraminifera and pteropods (zooplankton) that form CaCO3 shells have been demonstrated as particularly, puzzlingly, and potentially sensitive recorders of such combined influences. Furthermore, the Mediterranean Sea has been recognized as a global climate [...]

Coastal aquifers have been recently identified as important reservoirs of microbial diversity. These microbial communities mediate the biogeochemical transformations occurring in coastal aquifers, playing a key role on the transfer of nutrients, carbon and other solutes to the coastal ocean through the discharge of submarine groundwater (SGD). However, little is known on microbial communities thriving in coastal aquifers, their specific influence on the cycling of solutes in the coastal aquifer and the responses of marine microbial communities to the discharge of groundwater to the ocean. Characterizing this microbial biodiversity [...]

The recent acceleration of microplastic pollution has increased the need to develop novel collaborative tools for synergistic problems affecting coastal and oceanic ecosystems. One of the main hurdles is the lack of standardized, comparable and integrated information on this smaller size (micro- and nano-) plastic pollution, including their fragmentation, abundances and sources, regional hotspots of accumulation, and transport at the land-sea interface. The i-plastic project assembles a multidisciplinary consortium of European and Brazilian experts from five institutes and four countries that together will assess the dispersion and impacts of [...]

Biodiversity alteration of planktonic calcifiers Marine biodiversity changes of animals, plants, and microbes are clearly one of the greatest threats today to the world’s largest ecosystem, the surface ocean, in terms of the great variety of ecosystem services that it provides to humankind. This is due to unprecedentedly fast rates of climate change under anthropogenic pressure that are warming the oceans, reducing stratification, causing deoxygenation and ocean acidification, and more, with largely unknown consequences from plankton to fisheries, despite the strong dependence [...]

Coastal lagoons are habitats with high biological productivity, supporting rich and abundant ecosystems and providing goods and services for coastal communities. However, the increased human stress on lagoonal resources has negatively impacted these ecosystems. Well-known consequences of anthropogenic pressures on coastal lagoons include increased inputs of nutrients and pollutants, which are mainly originated from untreated domestic or industrial sewage and the use of fertilizers for agriculture in the surrounding watershed. Nevertheless, the mechanisms transporting solutes originated form anthropogenic activities to lagoon waters are not appropriately understood. [...]

The bathing waters of the Balearic Islands have always been known for their clarity, life, and color. Since the 60s, these characteristics have been used to create a pole of tourist attraction. However, the quality of the bathing waters has started to be threatened with the rise of the tourism industry especially during the high season. The main reason for the degradation of bathing waters is that, during these periods, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are forced to work at maximum capacity and, in those cases where WWTP inject wastewater [...]

Coastal areas are one of the richest and most diverse environments in Earth hosting many different ecosystems such as bays, estuaries, wetlands, mangroves, and salt marshes. These areas have a fundamental role on supporting marine communities, regulating the climate and provisioning food among other ecosystem services. In addition to that, coastal areas modulate the transfer of mater from land to ocean contributing to the marine biogeochemical cycles. The continuous population growth that these areas experimented during the last century resulted in an increased demand for resource consumption. In coastal areas, the main source of water resource for urban supply, industry [...]