Online database "see the sea" for the caspian sea

Abstract

For many years, the primary environmental problem of the Caspian Sea has been oil pollution, which is associated both with oil production and transportation, as well as changes in sea level, leading to secondary pollution, river runoff and even seismic activity, which provokes natural oil spills from the bottom of the sea. Abnormal bloom of waters every year becomes more and more long and covers more and more areas, and also occurs in areas where it was not previously observed. However, the current state of the sea, and the trends of its evolution has not been studied enough, which determines the relevance of the solution of the main task of the ongoing Russian Science Foundation Project "Assessing ecological variability of the Caspian Sea in the current century using satellite remote sensing data". Implementation of the proposed project will assess the relative contribution of each of the sources of pollution of the Caspian Sea, which varies in different periods depending on climatic factors, on the intensity of various hydrodynamic and hydrometeorological processes, on seismic activity and human economic activity. The goal of the project is to assess the changes in the ecological state of the Caspian Sea since the beginning of the current century under the impact of natural and anthropogenic factors. This calls for a detailed analysis of large banks of satellite data acquired over the Caspian Sea from 1999 to 2022 jointly with multi-year hydrometeorological and in situ data. The goal is achievable due to powerful capabilities of the "See the Sea" (STS) information portal developed by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI RAS) as part of IKI - Monitoring Center for Collective Use. STS offers oceanographers new and unique tools to work with remote sensing data, enabling comprehensive analysis of data different in physical nature, spatial resolution and time of acquisition.