EU-SITAR Project
SITAR
stands for “Seafloor Imaging and Toxicity: Assessment of Risks caused by buried
waste”.
SITAR's goal is to investigate and develop innovative solutions to the technological and scientific problems that up to now have prevented the assessment of the environmental risk connected with toxic dumpsites in the seafloor, where a significant part of the toxic waste is buried within the bottom sediments. Currently, the major obstacle to risk evaluation at a given dumpsite is due to the fact that state-of-the-art technology has been proven ineffective at determining extension and location of buried dumped containers, and potential or already present toxic effects due to bioaccumulation and prolonged exposure to contaminants. Lack of a reliable mapping of a given dumpsite, and failure in assessing in situ bioaccumulated toxicity, may ultimately lead to erroneous decisions in monitoring and management of the dumpsite, with severe environmental and economic consequences for the marine life and human related activities.
The University of Bath’s Acoustics
group is heavily involved in this project. The research team includes: Task
Leader Model-based imaging and acoustic 3-D reconstruction +
sea trials data processing Scaled tank experiments + sea trials data processing Engineering
student from the University of Pisa, on placement at Bath |
The official SITAR logo, designed by Dr. Peter DOBBINS (Bath) |
More about our research (and our results) will be coming
soon … as soon as the main SITAR web page comes on line J … Our team’s work has already yielded several international publications. |
SITAR aims at:
-
developing
acoustic methods and instrumentation for imaging of waste barrels/containers of
small dimension buried in unconsolidated sea sediments; the objective will be pursued by following
two main research lines. The first is investigation and test of a conceptually
innovative sonar system based on the principle of the bottom-penetrating
parametric sonar, but with the imaging capabilities of the traditional
side-scan sonar. The second research line will focus on the study and
experimental verification of "Multiple Aspect" acoustic sub-bottom
scattering measurement techniques, and related automatic data processing
strategies.
-
developing
biological testing methods to determine the relative in-situ bioaccumulated
toxicity at a contaminated site; the objective will be pursued by investigation and test in the field of
the technique of nanoinjection into fertilised fish eggs of extracts of
seafloor sediment collected in situ at a dumpsite. Observation of the
percentage of abnormally reproduced fish will give a relative indication of bioaccumulated
toxicity.
-
integrating
and making accessible the acoustical imaging data and the biotoxicological information
to end-users and decision makers; to achieve this objective, a GIS-integrated data presentation system
(Geographical Information System) will be developed. The system will allow for
user assessment of the dumpsite state in terms of distribution of containers
and toxicity indicators. Verification of the system will be conducted through
end-users evaluation.
This multi-national project (contract # EVK3-CT-2001-00047) is conducted
under the 5th Framework Programme
of the European Union.
It belongs to the Specific Programme: Energy, Environment and
Sustainable Development, and the Sub-programme: Environment and
Sustainable Development, Key action 3: “Sustainable Marine
Ecosystems", item 3.2 (Reducing the anthropogenic impact on
biodiversity and the sustainable functioning of marine ecosystems, and
facilitating the development of safe, economic and sustainable exploitation technologies)
and item 3.2.3 (Technologies for safe, sustainable and economic
exploration and exploitation of marine resources).