POSEIDON POS526

Semi-automated optical imaging will be conducted in diverse seafloor terrains for gas flux quantification and coral reef monitoring. First, novel autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and the manned submersible JAGO will be used to link high-resolution / low spatial coverage gas bubble measurements with low-resolution / high spatial coverage hydroacoustic measurements. Combined with gas concentration measurements on board the vessel, this will provide calibration data sets allowing to quantify gas fluxes from the release at the seafloor through the water column into the atmosphere (investigating a functional chain of the MOSES project). Second, contiguous optical mapping of deep water coral reefs will be done by deploying JAGO and the AUVs in high-relief terrain with currents. This provides baseline data for future monitoring campaigns and to deploy a novel multi-spectral camera. State-of-the-art data management workflows will be implemented for the Digital Earth project to initiate seamless data transfer from sensors to public data repositories. Autonomous station keeping in challenging terrain, based on optical observations, will feed into the ROBUST project.