SSLA@MM - Sea Waters Sensing Laboratory @MIO Marseille
SSLA@MMA laboratory for the continuous monitoring of chemical and biogeochemical variables, and a nursery for the development and application of new automated, low-energy sensors.
The pelagic marine environment is a complex and dynamic ecosystem, either because of the physical movements of the water masses that drive the biological and chemical distributions on a scale of one minute to one hundred metres, or because of the processes linked to the rapid interactions between planktonic micro-organisms and their physiological activities.
To monitor the marine environment, particularly its biological and chemical properties, innovative, automated sensors are being developed with the ultimate aim of being deployed on autonomous, isolated platforms (buoys). The laboratory SSL@MM plans to pump seawater continuously into the bay of Marseille (Station Marine d'Endoume, calanques de l'Anse aux Cuivres), not only to monitor the dynamics of the ecosystem using sensors already in the autonomy phase and present at the MIO, but also to enable sensors currently being developed and automated to pass the testing and validation phases under optimum conditions, with access to a natural environment while working under laboratory conditions.
So the SSL@MM will be a platform open to the outside world, welcoming scientists as well as private companies who want to study and consolidate, compare and integrate information from their sensors with existing ones, and surrounded by scientific expertise.
Scientific Committee :
Engineer and technical manager : Olivier Grosso
Le SSL@MM is 4 years old!
In September 2023, the SSL@MM (Sea Water Sensing Laboratory @ MIO Marseille, plateau technique du MIO), porté par Olivier Grosso et Melilotus Thyssen, et récemment par Clémentine Gallot (CDD IR CNRS) a fêté ses 4 ans de fonctionnement et intègre les moyens communs techniques du MIO. Le pompage continu et doux de l’eau de mer de la Calanque aux Cuivres vers des robinets en conditions de laboratoire est un succès, validé par son fonctionnement quasi continu. De même, le mode de nettoyage des tuyaux pour l’arrivée de l’eau de mer est une routine bien gérée. La stratégie haute fréquence et sur du long terme permet d’étudier les cycles diurnes et saisonniers d’un écosystème marin littoral, et vise à capturer les effets des événements impulsionnels de types coups de vents, tempêtes, pluies sur les communautés phytoplanctoniques, certains éléments chimiques et hydrologiques, ainsi que de leurs produits de transformations.